These days, we see that a plethora of personal care products are marketed as ‘natural product’. The term ‘natural’ may bring an idea to the consumers that the products are made 100% with ingredients from nature without any artificial or synthetic additives. Have you ever wondered how could a cream in a beautiful colour, perfect soft texture and sweet powdery smell be all natural? Don’t their production require chemicals to achieve such texture and odour? Shouldn’t natural solutions be in the form of tincture or infused oil? If yes, give me a high5!
What natural personal care products then? To date, there are no formal / legal definition to natural personal care products [1]. However, it is commonly accepted definition is that it refers to products processed naturally without any synthetic colourant, fragrance or additive [2]. So again, how can the perfect cream then be a natural personal care product? Well, that’s where we have to read the labels carefully. Is it labelled as ‘100% natural ingredients‘ or ‘100% natural functional ingredients’.
If we inspect products marketed as plant based / organic / natural, we may realise many of the products are formulated using natural/ plant based functional ingredients. Functional ingredients are ingredients that bring the desired function, e.g. moisturising, whitening. In addition to the functional ingredients, ingredients such as humectants, surfactants, emulsifiers etc are added, depending on the type of product. Sometimes, there ingredients are extracted from natural sources (e.g hyaluronic acid from natural sources) and sometimes not! Some manufacturers may label the percentage of natural ingredients used in the product.
For example, if you purchase a sandalwood nourishing cream, the active ingredients in sandalwood would be the main components that nourish your skin. The products may also contain an ingredient called saccharide isomerase, a carbohydrate complex derived from corn sugars, to create moisturising effect. If you read the list of ingredients, there may be some synthetic ingredients as well. The natural ingredients might have formed 95% of the total ingredients, and so the label will be “Natural active ingredients” and “95% of natural ingredients”.
Does this make you feel bad and worried that you are not free from chemicals? Well, let’s not be chemophobic. Not all chemicals are bad! Chemicals are used to create visually appealing texture and preserve the product from infection. Imagine yourself scooping up a bit of facial cream with your index finger! Is your finger free from germs? By scooping the cream with your finger, do you intend to make the cream a nutritious breeding environment for germs? Chemicals are added to preserve the cream from such bacterial and fungal infection and give it a reasonable shelf life, in addition to making it visually appealing and easy to apply. The approved chemicals and their maximum concentration in cosmetics products are strictly regulated by countries relevant authorities, e.g. in Malaysia, the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) under the Ministry of Health (MOH). The manufacturers include approved chemicals in their products.
We can conclude that natural personal care products are formulated using natural functional ingredients. Such products are not necessarily free of synthetic ingredients (n.b. some products may be 100% natural! Read their ingredients!). The amount of synthetic ingredients may be lesser than products that are not natural ingredient based. The chemicals used are those deemed safe by relevant authorities based on existing research findings. One tip to you, a consumer: Why do you have to depend on someone else’s promotion or assurance that a product is safe? Why don’t you read the ingredients and inspect a little on what is inside the products you use? That is the way of mindful consumerism after all!
References
- Kumar, S., Talwar, S., Krishnan, S., Kaur, P. and Dhir, A., 2021. Purchasing natural personal care products in the era of fake news? The moderation effect of brand trust. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 63, p.102668.
- Klaschka, U., 2016. Are natural compounds used in personal care products toxic for the aquatic environment?. Sustainable chemistry and pharmacy, 4, pp.13-20.
