Excuse me it has WHAT in it?!?!

I asked family and friends to tell me what their favorite bath and body products are.  I got a great list and some of them are surprisingly not full of chemicals.  Those few, however, are incredibly expensive.  One brand, Lush, which I absolutely love when I get it is as a gift; is crazy expensive.  My favorite product is their Chai shower gel.  Anyone who knows me knows I have a love affair with Chai.  I don't love it enough to spend almost $28 on a 16.9 oz bottle of shower gel though.  Not happening. 

I had a hard time locating ingredients online for some of the products which is a bit infuriating. If a company makes a medication,which is a chemical, they are required to give people access to every single ingredient in that medication.  Why is the same not true for personal hygiene products?  Some of these things we assume are safe contain some pretty nasty chemicals.  Of course every product has an ingredient label on it that you can read if you have a PhD or a dictionary handy.  As a consumer I feel like I should be able to get online and research what ingredients a product contains prior to purchasing it.  What's the point in me stepping in your store if I'm allergic to most of the ingredients you put into your products?

Okay back to the point of this little post.  One of my personal favorites, at least before I made my own, was Aveeno Active Naturals Body Wash with Fig and Shea Butter.  It smelled amazing.  The figs were a great exfoliant and it had the word natural in the label so there couldn't be THAT many chemicals in it right?  Wrong.

Here are the ingredients straight from the packaging:  (so glad I saved the empty bottle to put some shampoo in)
Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glycerin, Sodium Lauramphoacetate, Cocamidopropyl betaine, Ficus Carica (Fig) Fruit Extract, Butyrospermum, Carthamus Tinctoria (Safflower) Seed Oil, Mauritia Flexuosa Fruit Oil, Fragrance, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Citrate, Styrene/Acrylataes Copolymer, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Polyquaternium 7, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citric Acid (may also contain)

Some of this is self explanatory, but I'm going to take you through ingredient by ingredient.

Water.  If you don't know what water is by now, turn off your computer, go to the sink and experience it.  It's great.

Sodium Laureth Sulfate:  You'll find this in pretty much any soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, conditioner and all kinds of other stuff.  This is actually a salt and a surfacant/detergent.  It is what makes those big foamy bubbles we all  love to lather up with.  Sadly it makes the same bubbles that lather up our laundry soap, our dish soap and *pause for effect* TOOTHPASTE!!  Yes this crap is in your toothpaste.  They put soap in toothpaste.  I know our teeth need to be clean, but do they really need to be cleaned by detergent?  This is the ingredient in toothpaste that makes orange juice taste like butt after you just brushed your teeth.

Glycerin:  This is a naturally occurring alcohol compound that basically gives body washes, shampoos and gels their "gelly" texture.  It's perfectly safe and in fact you will find it in a few of my products and soaps because it is not toxic at all and can help give products a silky feeling.

Sodium Lauramphoacetate:  Say that second part 5 times fast.  I dare ya.  If you can do it and pronounce it correctly I will give you $1. So what is this stuff?  Kind of like the first Sodium ingredient we encountered it is a surfacant/detergent.  I guess they want us to be REALLY clean. It also boosts bubbles and foam.  If it makes more bubbles it can't be all bad right?  Bubbles are not evil after all.

Cocamidopropyl betaine  This product already has 2 surfacants in it.  Why would it need another?  Well, apparently it does.  This is an artificial surfacant derived from coconut oil and Dimethylaminopropylamine.  Don't ask me to spell or pronounce that ever again.  The reason they add this is to help condition skin.  Your poor skin will need it with all the detergent in this product.

Ficus Carica (Fig) Fruit Extract:  Fortunately this one is exactly what it sounds like.  Fig extract.  I can guarantee no Fig Netwons were hurt during the extraction process.  *Time for Fig Netwon break*

Butyrospermum:  Upon first glance I thought this had something to do with sperm.  Turns out I was wrong.  Whew.  It's a fancy name for Shea Butter.  You'll see that on my ingredients list as well, but I promise to just call it what it is.

Carthamus Tinctoria (Safflower) Seed Oil- This is a vegetable oil.  It comes from the Safflower which is related to the Sunflower.  It's a good emollient and moisturizer.  This is not an oil I use at least as of right now.  If I find a use for it I would definitely not be opposed to giving it a shot.  I love Sunflower Seed Oil though. 

Mauritia Flexuosa Fruit Oil  Oil derived from the Mauritia Flexuosa flower which can be found on the Moriche Palm.  This oil is rich in beta carotene and there has been some research showing that it may be able to filter and absorb the cancer causing UV Rays from the sun.  I've not seen this oil with any of my suppliers, but it's definitely one I'll look into more. 

Fragrance  This ingredient always makes me giggle when I read it.  Really?  Something that smells good has fragrance?  The word "fragrance" or "parfum" on a product label represents an undisclosed mixture of various scent chemicals and ingredients used as fragrance dispersant such as diethyl phthalate.  Diethyl Phthalate is an ester of phthalic acid.  It does NOT occur in nature and when burned the fumes are toxic.  What bothers me is this product has all these great natural oils in it.  Why not let those be "fragrance" enough?  If you're going to add artifical fragrances then there should be full disclosure as to what they contain.

Sodium Benzoate Another salt.  Body wash is supposed to moisturizing right?  Why so much salt?  This one acts a preservative and anti-corrosive.  So it helps keep the other bad stuff from hurting your skin so much.

Sodium Citrate-  This is basically citric acid.  It's a natural preservative.  I don't like how at the end it says it "May Also Contain" citric acid.  If it has sodium citrate in it then it does.  Stupid labels.

Styrene/Acrylataes Copolymer- Still trying to figure out why this is in a body wash.  This is a polymer which by the way contains acrylic.....not such a nice chemical.  The purpose of this being in bath products is so that it creates a film on your skin.  This film is what leaves you smelling pretty after it has been rinsed.

Hydroxypropyl and Methylcellulose-  These are both semi-synthetic polymer.  As far as safety goes it's not bad for you, but they add it as a stabilizer to keep all the ingredients together.  I guess shaking the bottle before use just is too inconvenient.  PS-  I use glycerin to stabilize some of my products.  It's natural and I can pronounce it.

Polyquaternium 7- If an ingredient has a number in it..........just back away from the bottle. This is yet ANOTHER Polymer and film former.  Now I know why the scent stays with me for so long after I used this.

Tetrasodium EDTA (cut and pasted because I couldn't figure out how to put this in layman's terms) EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) is a chelating agent, used to sequester and decrease the reactivity of metal ions that may be present in a product.  My question is why would metal ions be in a bath product?


If you're still awake at the end of this I will give you a cookie, no Fig Netwons though.  I ate them all.  

Now that we've had a bit of an education about what a supposedly "natural" mainstream product contains, you're probably wonder what is going to make my stuff different?  

1. You can pronounce my ingredients.  No google, PhD or Dictionaries needed.
2. Every ingredient in my products have a purpose.  When I say they have a purpose I mean that purpose is to benefit you.  I won't put something in a product just to give it a shelf life of 80 years.  
3. I won't have to write my ingredient list in micro print to fit it all on my products.

   
Without giving away my recipes here is a list of ingredients of my basic body wash.  The ingredients vary depending on what type of body wash I make, but you get the idea:
  
Coconut Soap (type of soap will vary according to recipe), Water, Glycerin, Shea Butter (sometimes Cocoa Butter or Coconut Oil), Carrier Oil (Jojoba Oil, Apricot Oil, Grape seed Oil, Almond Oil, Castor Oil, Olive Oil, Sunflower Seed Oil),  Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils

Okay the list looks a little long that's because I listed each type of emulsifier (Shea butter, etc), carrier oils and all that.   


The whole point of this post is to highlight that none of us are 100% aware of what is in the products we use and trust.  I decided to go with a product that used to be one of my favorites instead of taking from the list of others.  I did this to prove that I too, didn't pay attention.  If you see the word "natural" on the label you want to believe it won't contain anything that is bad for you.  Unfortunately that isn't always the case.