Lifestyle, Motherhood
Style
Toxic-Free Products
How Do I Know If A Product Is Really Natural?
Aug 12, 2018
It’s no secret that I love clean lifestyle products. Clean is just another way of saying natural or nontoxic.
I didn’t make this lifestyle transition overnight, though.
It took many years.
Starting out, I would use the last of my MAC or Lancome lipstick one day and make a note of which shade ran out so that I would remember to purchase a toxic-free lipstick the next time I was grocery shopping at Whole Foods or Sprouts.
I had no idea what I was doing in that cosmetic aisle but I had great intentions.
Luckily, the market wasn’t as saturated so I could usually tell if a product was clean or not.
Now, it’s extremely hard to distinguish because of marketing.
The higher the demand for natural products, the more brands will try to stay relevant.
They will switch their packaging or messaging but not their actual ingredients and that’s called greenwashing. Target is really bad about this….
Do not assume a product is natural because the label says “Natural” or “Organic”…
Sadly, marketing ethics aren’t black and white and a company can technically make false claims in order to sell their product.
They just have to have the truth written in fine print somewhere in order to get away with it.
What you have to pay close attention to – instead of the packaging – is the label of ingredients.
If you buy something just because the packaging says it’s “Vegan” or “Certified Organic” but the ingredients are terrible…
….you will feel it in your hormones, in your skin, and in your overall health (especially as you age).
Here are the terrible ingredients to watch out for:
- bha and bht: (butylated hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene synthetic antioxidants)
- coal-tar dyes: (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or naphthalene)
- dea compounds: (diethanolamine)
- formaldehyde
- parabens
- petrolatum: (petroleum or liquid paraffin)
- phthalates: (fragrance)
- propelyne glycol
- sulfates
- sunscreen chemicals: (benzophenone, PABA, avobenzone, homosalate and octyl methoxycinnamate)
- toluene: (may be listed as: benzene, toluol, phenylmethane, methylbenzene)
- triclosan
If you want to read which products each of these are in and why they are terrible you can download the pdf here.
If you would like to see what I use every day, click here for my exact makeup products.
Click here for the list of products I use on my body, here for my hair products, and here for my home cleaning products.
