by kelly
/ February, 24 2016 01:30
Have you ever read a personal care product label and been unable to pronounce half the words in the ingredients section? I'm pretty sure we've all been there. So how do you know what it all means? Well, in this week's installment of our Ingredient Truths series I'm going to explain how to decipher these pesky ingredient labels.
Now, all personal care product labels in the US, as mandated by the US Food & Drug Administration, must use INCI names for their ingredients. INCI stands for International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. INCI names are the scientific names of ingredients.
While it may seem overly complicated to use this naming convention for ingredients - INCI names actually benefit us, the consumers. INCI names create standardization in labeling. Thus thanks to INCI names we can easily compare the ingredients between different products using a common language. Additionally, INCI names are used by Canada and the European Union in their personal care product labeling. So they work internationally too!
Nevertheless, if you've seen some of these names you may have thought "am I putting something crazy on my body?" In reality even simple natural and organic ingredients like those in our skin care and suncare products can have scary sounding names. For example, chamomile must be listed as anthemis nobilis, olive oil as olea europaea and sunflower as helianthus annuus. Not quite what you might expect.
Now that doesn't mean that all the funky sounding names are simple, natural ingredients - so it's best to read all the ingredients. For our products all of the ingredients are in the “Our Ingredients” section of our website and you can find more information on ingredients from the Environmental Working Group and CTFA (Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, Inc.) Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary.
So here's to more informed shopping and less uncertainty while reading labels!
