The Natural Series, Part 2:

Reading Labels on Natural Cosmetics

The art of reading product labels is a skill that’s easy to learn.
It will help you get the most for your money.

Before purchasing any new cosmetic, such as shampoo[1], if your goal is to use only high quality, natural shampoos, then reading labels is a must!

You might be thinking, “But I don’t read things that I can’t understand”.  Okay, but to help you understand on a basic level, I’m proposing My Label Reading Method below which gives you a clear understanding of ingredients, even if chemistry or botany are not your favorite subjects.

BTW, this article is about products that are nature-based[2] or contain more botanical, than lab-created, ingredients. Products like the one featured below often include chemical substances, but they represent a small portion, often the basis for the kind of product, such as a shampoo.

My Method Looks for Patterns

Once you recognize the patterns or structural parts of a cosmetic label, you’ll have the key to label reading.  Learning a few tricks doesn’t require a degree in the sciences of chemistry or botany.

My Method for reading cosmetic labels begins with a quick scan.  Note that each ingredient ends with a comma, separating it from the next ingredient in the list. Scanning the ingredients for a shampoo, we can see there are 20 ingredients. Now look again for name patterns and find 2 types of ingredients:

1. The nature-based or botanical ingredients, written as “Botanical Name (Common Name)”
2. The ingredients that originated in a lab.  These are derivatives, such as “Sodium Cocoate”, that originate from plants, but are listed as “(Coconut Oil),saponified”[3]. Or, they are chemical substances made in the lab, such as “Tocopherol”[4]

Here’s a fictional label for familiarity with the words and formats of a cosmetic label that has mainly nature-based ingredients.

Below are ingredients for a natural shampoo.

About the Patterns in the List of Ingredients

The first ingredient is Saponaria Officinalis (Soapwort) Leaf extract. Its name follows a particular form—Botanical Name (common name). Botanical names[1] may not be familiar, but common names might be and both must follow this format.

To make them more obvious, I’ve underlined Sodium Cocoate (Saponified Coconut) Oil, and Tocopherol (Vitamin E).

Another pattern I see is the ingredient name plus extracts of, and essential Oil, indicating the form of the plant’s essence. A few more are “aqueous extract”, “leaf, flower, or fruit extract”, and “hydrosol”.

An aside, but important to know—ingredients are always listed in order of their relative amounts: the first is the largest amount (here it is the Soapwort leaf extract) and the last is Rosemary Essential Oil, the smallest amount.

My summary as a quick scan of above ingredients:

1. I count 20 ingredients on this label.

2. Ingredients from botanical plants are easy to spot. Oregano, a culinary herb which has anti-fungal and wound-healing properties, appears like this: “Origanum vulgare (Oregano) leaf extract”.

3.  2 of the 20 ingredients are lab-generated: “Sodium Cocoate”, and “Tocopherol”. They don’t exist in this form in nature, nor are they part of a natural ingredient. How do I know this?  See NOTES[1], below …

Additionally, “Tocopherol”, is derived from vitamin E.  And Oryza Sativa (Rice) seed water, is a prepared solution which contains a lab-generated product at 5%.   I did look these up.  However …

… in order to categorize them as lab-generated, you don’t need to look them up, but can easily tell whether they are not taken directly from plants.  How?  Look at the name!  For example, “tocopherol”.  The name tocopherol is a single word and does not have another name in parentheses.  Because of that tiny fact, you know it’s not a plant, not a botanical.  Thus it must be a chemical substance.

My Conclusions

Luckily for consumers, there is informational value on labels.  And if you look at the pattern of the information, even if you don’t understand the specific words, you’ll know almost instantly if you want to purchase the product.

Nature-based or botanical ingredients are now considered to be high-quality ingredients, while lab-created ingredients are added as preservatives, or when needed and cannot be obtained in a natural form.  A shampoo might have quite different botanical ingredients than a lotion for skin, etc.  Yet the pattern of ingredients is the same.  Whenever you see a single-word ingredient, you know that is a not a botanical ingredient.  

Plus, with practice, you can benefit in at least four ways.  You can:

1. assess the quality in one glance at a label
2. look for the specific ingredients that you desire
3. experience the benefits of higher quality
4. save money by purchasing fewer products

Are you willing to explore a bit up front to be able to make better-informed decisions on cosmetics or self-care?

We have tools online (and sometimes in print) to make better-informed decisions.  They are:

• articles on lifestyle or influential websites that present high quality products
• ratings by an independent agency for self-care (and cosmetic) ingredients

Write to me about this post to comment on whether My Method above works for you!  Look for the third part in this series, Lifestyle and Nature-based Values.

NOTES:

Images in this post are digitized by the British Library on Unsplash.com

[1] Shampoo is considered a cosmetic by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938.

[2] Nature-based ingredients are sourced from botanicals (plants) and have been minimally processed

[3] Saponification is a chemical process that turns an oil into a soap (a surfactant that lifts dirt away from a surface)

[4] Tocopherol is the name of substances in Vitamin E known as that vitamin.  8 tocopherols have been identified

[1] NOTES: We could limit the categories to just 2: Botanical or nature-based, for the first category, and Lab-generated, or Lab-created, for the second.  Mostly it is easy to recognize a nature-based ingredient and differentiate it from a lab-generated or created one based solely on the format that nature-based or botanical names use. Test this yourself: Compare “Sodium Cocoate (Saponified Coconut) Oil”—a lab-generated product, with “Cocos Nucifera (Virgin Coconut) Oil”.  Spot the big difference?  Cocos Nucifera (Virgin Coconut) follows the Botanical Name (Common Name) rule reiterated above.

[1] It’s possible to “know” many of the Botanical names of plants, by familiarity, and reliance upon them. But it’s the format that is needed here in label reading, not so much the knowledge of a botanical name

Part 3 in the Natural Series will be posted soon:

1. See this post for an explanation of the word natural
2. Read above for “The art of reading labels on products, a skill that’s easy to learn …”
3. Lifestyle changes that make all the difference to your quality of life. See the third post in this series coming soon!

*Concern about one’s health is a whole topic by itself.  I am writing about the use of a concept about products and to give examples of quality, show how products are labelled, and give information that you can use to make your purchasing decisions.

Resources: “What does ‘nature’ mean?” by Frederic Ducarme and Dennis Couvet. Published in Palgrave Communications on nature.com, here.

Copyright, LotusLadyAromatica, 2024

This post is for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice, medical or otherwise.  This post is the opinion of the author, who actively seeks out, researches and formulates with natural materials which have been minimally processed.