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Five Steps to Natural Beauty

Justine Lassoff

Posted on November 09 2015

Five Steps to Natural Beauty
 

Do you know the difference between a paraben and a phthalate? Can you spot the endocrine disruptor on your deodorant label? Fear not, we’ve got you covered. Take our Five Steps to Natural Beauty and you’re there!

FIVE STEPS TO NATURAL BEAUTY

Do you know the difference between a paraben and a phthalate? Can you spot the endocrine disruptor on your deodorant label? Fear not, we’ve got you covered. Take our Five Steps to Natural Beauty and you’re there!

  1. Read your labels. This is the most important thing you can do for your health. If you can’t understand a complicated ingredients list, chances are it includes toxic chemical ingredients that you don’t want anywhere near your body.
  2. Know the red flags. Avoid products that list the word “paraben” on the label—those are the aforementioned endocrine disruptors. As are phthalates, which usually appear under the friendlier names of “perfume” and “fragrance.” (If the “fragrance is naturally derived from essential oils,” you’re usually okay.) Where these ingredients live, more toxic chemicals usually follow.
  3. Do your research. This is the caveat to step one—because the dirty little secret of the beauty industry is that they can put toxic chemical ingredients in their products and not list them on labels. Check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database—you can even get it as an app on your phone. You can search product names as well as ingredients, and even scan a bar code to find out just what’s inside!
  4. When in doubt, choose organic. USDA Certified Organic beauty products contain no pesticides, insecticides, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers, bio-engineered or irradiated ingredients, synthetic growth hormones or GMOs. Never. Ever.
  5. Vegan doesn’t always mean natural. Many of us confuse the terms “vegan” and “natural” but they’re definitely not interchangeable. Vegan simply means a product is made without animal ingredients—but it says nothing about toxic chemicals. You may still have to do a little research to avoid those.

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