Skincare products are often packaged and marketed with deceitful claims that a product is 100% natural or organic. But shoppers are wise to be skeptical when they see these kind of claims. Although a product that claims to be 100% natural may contain mostly healthy ingredients there is nothing legally binding as to how far the word natural can be stretched. Afterall even petroleum is derived from natural substances, and can technically be called a natural product but that doesn’t mean you want it in your skin cream. So it’s always wise to read the list of ingredients and make sure that the natural ingredients in your lotions are actually ones you want seeping into your skin.
It’s also important to remember that claims of natural do not necessarily reflect the methods that were used to grow or extract the ingredients listed on the your product, whereas the word organic extends to the methods in which plants or animals were grown. A lotion that contains herbs that were grown on a factory farm using artificial pesticides can still claim to be natural as far as the law is concerned, but if if has more than 5% of such ingredients it will not be able to receive the usda seal that certifies it as organic.
The best products of course are the ones that say 100% certified organic and have the USDA seal of certification. These must contain only organic ingredients that were obtained using organic methods. What this means is they cannot contain any plants that were grown with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or antibiotics. They cannot contain food additives or genetically modified organisms and the farmland they were grown on must have been free from chemicals for atleast three years.
Sometimes you may see a product that says ‘made with organic ingredients’ but does not contain a usda seal. These can contain as little as 70% organic ingredients. What the other 30% are could be anything. They could be harsh chemicals or they could just be things like honey from pollen that was collected from non organic plants, or essential oils that were extracted using a process that included alchahol. That’s why it’s always important to read the label.
