Have you ever looked at an ingredient list and wondered what actually goes into the skincare you’re buying? Learning to decipher ingredients can tell you exactly what goes into your skincare. Instead of relying on what a brand tells you, a quick read will reveal whether your money’s actually going into the ingredients or the marketing!

Take this list in the image above, of ingredients found in a popular brand’s baby wash:

Quick tip! The first 3-4 ingredients in the list usually contains over 95% of what’s in the bottle! In this case: water, lauryl glucoside and sodium coco sulphate. Besides water, the other two ingredients are detergent ingredients, used because of their powerful foam-boosting capabilities (since many people wrongly think foam = clean!).

Sulphates such as sodium coco or lauryl sulphate are some of the strongest detergent ingredients available (they were originally created for industrial use!). Glucosides are another form of synthetic detergent. Both purchased in powder or liquid form, they are simply dissolved in water to create a liquid wash.

The rest of the ingredients are a mix of more detergent ingredients, thickeners, moisturisers, emulsifiers, pH modifiers and preservatives, fungicides and bactericides.

Now, here’s another list of ingredients. Look familiar? Other than lauramine oxide (a different detergent ingredient) and ammonium chloride (a thickener and fragrance ingredient), most of the other ingredients are very much the same.

The kicker? This listing of ingredients comes from a dishwashing liquid, which costs roughly a fifth of what the baby wash costs.

Ingredient list reading - it’s an eye-opening, addictive habit! Are you paying for what goes into the bottle or what goes outside it?

From all of us at Four Cow Farm

xxx