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In the Organic cosmetic and skin care industry, as in many other industries due to the lack of ethics, there are a bunch of phony guys using the most incredible made-up words to describe their products or ingredients in an attempt to make them “look” more natural than they really are. One of the words that seem to pop up a lot lately in almost every non-ethical and dishonest skin care brand is “Natural Fragrance Oil”.
For those that truly know the denominations, “Natural Fragrance Oil” doesn’t exist. This is just a new word made-up to disguise toxic chemicals behind the word “Natural”, but for the majority of the consumers it might make them believe the product carrying “Natural Fragrance Oil” is of a natural origin and safe to use. Nothing farther from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »
Your mother has been telling you since you were a little girl all the ways to stay beautiful, but have you been listening? Here are just a couple of reminders on things you should and shouldn’t be doing to keep your skin the most radiant and youthful it can possibly be!
- Stop the scrubbing
Exfoliating to get rid of dead skin cells is great once a week. There is no need to be using a heavy duty exfoliator every night especially on acne prone skin. Go the natural route with an awesome organic product or to skip the cost add a little baking soda to your favorite face cream to get the exfoliating texture that you are looking for
- Don’t touch your face
Avoid putting your hands on your face as much as possible. It is one thing when your hands are freshly washed and you are dabbing on make-up, it is a completely different thing when you constantly pick your face at your desk. Your hands are a breeding ground for germs and once they go on your face your pores are soaking all of that nastiness up. This can cause breakouts not to mention get you sick!
- Be careful
We all know that you should take off your make-up every night, but a lot of the products out there that aid in the process require you to scrub a quilted pad over the most delicate parts of your face. Beware of this. My personal vote is to find a cream based make-up remover, apply it to your eye area and wipe off gently with a cotton ball. Rinse the rest of your face with your favorite gentle cleanser.
- Don’t product jump
It is important to give whatever product you are trying or using a decent amount of trial and error. Just like you aren’t going to see results from working out after only one week, you aren’t going to see the true benefits of a skin care plan in that time either. Pick an all-inclusive skin care line/plan that feels comfortable for you and in line with what you believe your skin needs and stick with it for at least two months. If after that time you don’t feel it is working than it is okay to move on to something else.
- Clean your stuff!
I clean my make-up brushes on the REG and you should be too. Even if you are using them right after you have washed your face, your face still holds more oil than the skin on the rest of your body and it is building up on your bristles. It is important to keep all your make-up supplies clean to prevent irritation and break-outs.
It seems these days business ethics and honesty are a thing of the past, at least for the majority. Environmental organizations, organic skin care companies and a myriad of other industries are jumping in the green wagon just looking for more lucrative ways to make money, with little or no intentions to really make a difference.
Yesterday as I was talking to a friend, I received an email from another friend in Chicago with information about an “organic” skin care company and she provided me the link to this company’s products in the cosmetic database which is maintained by the Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org). The first thing that I noticed was the incredibly high rate the only two products had, (high rate in the EWG database means bad news) which only meant they were a concoction of toxic waste in a bottle, as I usually call products that are far away from natural.
This got me curious and I headed to this company’s website. The word Organic was hugely printed next to the company’s name. As a visitor, I might have fallen for it and though, “well this company looks good” if it wasn’t for the fact that I had already read the list of ingredients of 2 toxic products on the EWG website. I started browsing around and I stumbled on 2 pages I admit got me furious. The first page mentioned how responsible this company was at not including any harmful ingredients in their formulations. Ingredients like paraben, sulfates, EDTA and others, they assured were not added to any of their products. The other page said in huge letters, they were certified members of the NPA, the Natural Products Association. In my investigation I headed to the NPA website, as until yesterday I was not familiar with, and looked in their database if this company was an approved member. Of course, as I suspected I couldn’t find them. I thought, they might be new and not listed on the NPA website, it’s a possibility nonetheless, so I checked the list of authorized ingredients a company needs to use to apply for membership. Of course parabens, sulfates, EDTA and others were not on the list of accepted ingredients. This only meant, the Organic Skin Care company I was researching couldn’t possible be a certified member of the NPA as they were using all of the ingredients that were considered toxic by this organization, therefore even if they applied for a certified membership, it must have been denied to them.
I headed back to the Organic Skin Care company and checked the products they offer for sale on their websites. As suspected, this company doesn’t share their ingredients on the website. To me as a consumer this only means they are hiding something.
Remember I mentioned this Organic Skin Care company had a page on their website where they mentioned they didn’t use any parabens, sulfates, phthalates, EDTA or any other toxic ingredients? Well in the same page they mentioned they only use natural organic ingredients. So I headed back to the EWG website to check in more detail what ingredients these 2 products had, and 3 different types of parabens, EDTA, sulfates and a myriad of other harmful ingredients were included in their products. Not only that, the few natural ingredients included in their formulations weren’t certified organic at all.
Disgusted? me too!
Companies like these have been for years in my bathroom, and they are the reason why I was diagnosed with skin cancer and the reason why I started By Valenti Organics in first place. Make no mistakes, the sun is not the one to blame for mot of the skin cancer diagnosis these days, the unethical cosmetic companies and their toxic concoctions are.
So as a consumer in this internet era, how can we spot the unethical companies that just jumped into the organic wagon to make a buck without the least intention to use accepted ingredients or make a difference? Here are a few tips I came up with to eliminate from your shopping list those toxic concoctions:
- Don’t be fooled by the word organic: Many use it everywhere on their websites and even print them on their products, and chances are it means nothing to them. Verify the list of ingredients before buying, and if you see EDTA, paraben, sulfates, phthalates among a few natural & organic ingredients, just don’t buy it. Just because the product might contain a few organic ingredients, along with all the toxic ones doesn’t make it’s safe to use. Would you drink pure water if sulfuric acid was added to it?…
- Verify they belong to the organizations they claimed to be certified from: With billions of websites, it’s very difficult to spot who is for real and who’s a fake, so any claims made by a company should be verifiable. Claims like “we’re certified members of the NPA, USDA Organic, etc” are easily verifiable. If a company is for real, they would have no problem in provide their visitors with a link to the page that shows their business on the organization’s website they claim to be certified from. But if you can’t find it or the website doesn’t provide any links, just head to the NPA, USDA or any other website and conduct a search for the company in question. If they are not there, chances are they never apply for these certifications or they were rejected, in which case they are illegally using these logos on their websites, or they might not yet be listed. Contact these organizations and ask them if the company you’re researching has been verified by them. If not file a claim.
- Check the company’s website for a list of ingredients: Companies that are hiding something generally don’t print the ingredients list on their websites. If they don’t feel comfortable sharing their ingredients with the world, what made you think they are safe to use?
Have more tips on how to spot the fake Organic Skin Care companies? share them with all our readers, just comment below.
Stay safe and fabulous!
Manuela Valenti
CEO / Founder
By Valenti Organics
Jabón de Castilla (Castille or Castile Soap) was born in Spain in the Reino de Castilla (Castile Kingdom). There are records of this soap been produced as early as the 8th century, but it became popular much later.
While in the northern parts of old Europe soaps were made using animal fats, in the Reino de Castilla (Castile Kingdom) there was abundance of olives and pure olive oil, which is the main and only ingredient in the making of this particular soap.
The soap became synonymous of royalty as it was the preferred choice of kings, queens and royal families in the area.
What ingredients are contained in the Castile Soap?
A true, original and genuine Castile soap is made with only 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil, water and lye (sodium hydroxide) for a bar of soap, or potassium hydroxide for a liquid soap, and nothing more. The true Castile soap contains no fragrances, nor it contains other oils to render it harder or foamier. Any Castile soap containing coconut oil, fragrances, essential oils or any other ingredients, is not and should not be called Castile soap, although unfortunately this rule is not respected by many manufacturers offering fake Castile soaps.
The genuine Castille soap is very mild, suitable for the most sensitive of skin types and people who are sensitive to detergents, chemicals and fragrances. The soap makes a creamier foam with small bubbles, and might not be of the liking of many, yet this soap is so mild and gentle that can even be used on newborns.
Olive oil is high in oleic acid, 60%-80%, and palmitic acid, 8%-20%, making it an excellent regenerative and moisturizing ingredient. Olive oil also contains squalane, a natural compound known to protect and nourish the skin, especially the sensible dry ones. Olive oil is non-comedogenic, which means it won’t clog pores making it suitable for acne prone skin. Since it’s high in Vitamin E, it helps regenerate small scars and abrasions. Because of the properties of Olive Oil, the Castile soap is known as THE best soap in the world.
Many believe Jabón de Castilla is green and not white the fact is that olive oil makes a white bar of soap unless colour is added. It’s common for Castile soap to have a “whitish” skin, not to be confused with “soda ash”. This skin is perfectly normal and proves it’s made with pure Extra Virgin Olive Oil of the best quality. This white skin won’t cause any harm in any way and it goes away when water touches it. As the soap continues curing (becuase soaps never stop curing) and harden the soap will become completely white the reason why Castile soap was once called “The White Soap” by the Kings and Queens of Spain.
We find these articles by the thousands if not millions all over the internet, not mentioning each one usually provides at least 1 recipe to try at home. Many of these recipes are quite effective, but how about how much money you really save?
The idea to make your own lotions and bath products is so that you could truly know what you put in them while saving tons of money since the best ones (the truly best ones, not the ones made in a lab with thousands of poisons ones, I’m talking about the real natural & organic ones) cost quite a lot, but are we really saving that much by making them ourselves?
Unless you already use all organic ingredients in your kitchen from olive oil all the way to pumpkin oil, spices, botanicals, essential oils, extracts, etc. you will soon find out that buying even the smallest bottle of high quality natural & organic ingredients (not the fake synthetic stuff, the real stuff) costs a load of money. All the ingredients we use at By Valenti are quite expensive as we only buy high quality certified organic oils, botanicals and essential oils. 1/2 oz of Bulgarian Rose Essential Oil costs $359, a bottle of Certified Organic Pumpkin Oil can cost $20 and from that you might only use 2-5ml of oil and 2 drops of Rose EO into your formulation, so unless you have it around your kitchen already, buying all these expensive ingredients we regularly use in our formulations soon add up. In the end you will spend much, much more than buying that great organic serum you so much love, know is absolutely natural and does wonders to your skin for $35.
Many other articles we found talk about buying or using fragrances and cheap or artificial ingredients to make your own products at home, but are you sure you want to keep poisoning your body even further?… the main scope of Organic & Natural cosmetics and bath products is so you won’t keep adding more harmful chemicals to your body potentially harming yourself while increasing your risks for cancer and other awful diseases which are on the rise do to the lack of integrity of the giant cosmetic companies and the lack of regulations by the FDA.
The are many responsible Organic Skin Care brands that are making a difference in this so corrupted industry aside from By Valenti, whom are only using Organic Certified Ingredients and are completely avoiding the use of artificial ingredients, petrochemicals, GMOs, sulfates, phthalates, and many other extremely harmful components.
So next time you read those articles on how to make your own organic products at home, do the math, you might not be saving that much money after all.
