Truth in Labelling

Don’t you just hate it when someone has purposely deceived you?

That’s just how I felt when I read an article from one of my favourite information sites CleanLife. The CleanLife site educates the public on the health risks and environmental impact associated with the use of chemical laden skincare, cosmetic and cleaning products and food.

It seems that well know company Natural Instinct also known as Organic Instinct has been found out on deceiving us all. They’ve been deliberately concealing some of their ingredients so as to sell more of their product. These chemicals they have been failing to list are dangerous ones that people need to be aware of. Some of the chemicals in question are;

Sodium Laureth Sulphate (A highly irritating chemical and although it is less irritating than SLS which is its cousin, it cannot be metabolised by the liver and therefore its effects are much more long lasting, it also has contamination concerns of a couple of different ingredients one of which is Ethylene Oxide, which has much more serious side effects such as leukemia, cancer, hodgkins’ disease and kidney and liver damage)

Cocamide DEA (Has been linked to cancer. Studies have also shown that it directly inhibits fetal brain development in laboratory studies by blocking the absorption of choline, a nutrient required for brain development and maintenance.

Cetrimonium Chloride (Known for allergic reactions and immunotoxicity)

You can see the whole CleanLife report here: It looks like the Natural Instinct products aren't quite as natural as they'd like people to think!

I found this article particularly upsetting, not only because I was one of the people fooled, yes, I’d been using their shampoo for a few months, because going by their ingredients list, (that’s always the first thing I check before I buy something and which I now find was incorrect) it was comparable to other natural shampoos but cheaper. I should have known better, the fact that their products were substantially cheaper should have rung alarm bells straight away.

What I found much more upsetting was that these ingredients were contained in their baby shampoo, baby wash, baby conditioner and baby bath products. We need to be extra careful in making sure that the products we use on our babies are chemical free because of long term health problems. Parents who were buying these products thinking they were natural and free from damaging chemicals were tricked into using something that they really didn’t want to be using.

This Company was also found listing their ingredients in the incorrect order on their product labels. Where is the truth in labelling? We need to be able to know exactly what ingredients are contained in the product and in the correct order they were used. We should be able to rely on labels to provide accurate information about chemicals and other ingredients in our skincare products.

The fact that Natural Instinct has been caught in the act is wonderful and hopefully it will deter other Companies from putting misleading labels on their products. But when there is BIG money involved, I wonder if some Companies might think it is worth the risk, I hope not. Natural Instinct probably would have corrected these false labelling problems by now, but I personally would never trust or buy their products again.

Natural Instinct is not the only Company that uses these chemicals in their products, there are many, many more who quite openly include them in their ingredients list. It really is a good idea to check your favourite shampoo and conditioner to see if you and your family are being exposed to dangerous chemicals (there is many more than the ones I have mentioned here) every time you wash your hair. A good site to have a look at is the Cosmetics Database where you can type in any ingredient you don't know and are worried about and it will tell you what health concerns are connected to it. Great for finding out if the products you are using are safe or not.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when we read Natural or Organic on a product we would know that it really was Natural or Organic? Sadly this is not the case and many Companies falsely put the word Natural on the front of their products to entice you to buy, when in fact they might only contain a very small percentage of natural ingredients in them.

You can find the Truth in Labelling badge proudly shown on my website and on my blog page so that you can be confident in knowing that Pure and Natural AromaBeauty products really are Pure and Natural.