Looking into ingredients isn’t just something you should do with your food. As your skin is the largest organ in the body, what we put on it matters.
For years I went back and forth with different products, learning what all the terms meant- vegan, organic, natural, clean, cruelty-free, chemical vs mineral, and many more. Here is a short list of products that I have researched, tried and loved. No product is perfect, so doing our due diligence to find out about what’s in the product and how it affects our bodies as well as what the company believes and where your money is going when you purchase their products is equally important.
Along my journey, I found a site I LOVE to check my beauty products: Ethical Elephant‘s Brand Directory is a database where you can look up beauty products that you use or want to use and see where they stand. This list let’s you know if the products are vegan, meaning that they use plant-based and synthetic alternatives to animal-derived ingredients, or cruelty-free.
This is important to me as I don’t want any animals being tested on for my beauty and skin care products. However, the most important thing to me is that the product is clean. This means that the company doesn’t substitute out animal based ingredients for synthetic toxic ones like parabens, phthalates, sulfates, and synthetic fragrances that can be harmful to your health long term. I found that finding clean products was much harder than expected! With the stamp of VEGAN I expected my products to be clean, but this only means that they don’t use any type of animal products. I appreciate this and buy vegan and cruelty-free products, however finding clean and non-toxic products became a treasure hunt.
More sites that I appreciate are Ulta’s “Clean Ingredient Product list,” Think Dirty Clean Beautique, and EWG (Environmental Working Group) Skin Deep,
In this post, I am providing links to some products that I recommend and are either vegan, cruelty-free or have clean ingredients and that I have personally used and love.
I encourage you to identify what matters to you and then seek out products that you feel comfortable and safe putting on your body. Don’t be fooled by marketing and product labels that say “organic” or “natural,” as I even thought that vegan meant clean for a long time.
