Are Your Products Really Clean?

Companies are tricking their consumers into trusting their ingredients by labeling their products “natural” and “clean.” Are they telling the truth or is it a marketing scam?

Wellness isn’t just about exercising, it’s about consciously investing in companies and products that have your health and best interest as their number one priority.

With that said, it’s time to stop feeding into toxic companies.

Companies like Mrs. Meyers, Tarte, Sun Bum and Seventh Generation are guilty of greenwashing—presenting themselves as toxic-free options, but in reality, being as full of chemical as drug-store brands.

“Greenwashing is the rebranding of products where they add leaves, white backgrounds and words like ‘natural’ so that consumers will trust and buy them,” says Melissa Truitt, an educator with Young Living Essential Oils. “But they aren’t technically lying to us, because the ingredients are clearly written on the back of bottles…they just hope we’re not smart enough to read them. They thought wrong.”

Unfortunately, most companies’ first concern is business—not genuine concern for the people who are buying the products.

According to the Think Dirty App, which shows potentially toxic ingredients in products, ingredients like butylparaben, phthalates and isobutylparaben are commonly used as preservatives in personal care products and other products in the home. Branching from the paraben family, these ingredients mimic estrogen, disrupt hormones and were found in the breast cancer tumors of 19 of 20 women who were studied.

Since the skin is the largest organ, the products used will reach the bloodstream and can affect the consumer momentarily or over the years. Since the skin is thin, the products that contain these harmful chemicals are placed on the skin, and they virtually take no time to reach internal organs. It is said that eating these products would be less dangerous since your body has enzymes that break down complex ingredients while the skin is left to absorb everything that enters its pores.

The ingredient “fragrance” is the scariest. The major concern with it is that the law is not required to disclose the individual ingredients used to produce it, meaning harmful ingredients such as formaldehyde, the substance that preserves dead bodies, isn’t required to be labeled according to an article by Non-Toxic Revolution.

It’s important to find a company you trust, one that offers 100 percent honesty and transparently labeled ingredients. One that puts the people over their profit.

Truitt says, “What happens when we stop buying these toxic ingredients? Money talks and when they are losing it, they will be forced to change.”