The Ingredients Talk – Post #2 – Guidelines to find the the concentration of ingredients in a cosmetic product

Hello everyone! Welcome to my second post of The Ingredients Talk series. We can tell a lot about a product by looking at its ingredients label. While most brands disclose the complete list, there are some brands who mention only the key ingredients, and some don’t mention anything at all! And I try to stay away from these brands as they come across shady to me. Then, there are other brands which trick their customers to believe that their products are natural and full of good, natural ingredients with their misleading advertising. So, it has become increasingly important to pay attention to the ingredients list of a product rather than the product’s claims. Let’s look at some guidelines to guess and judge the concentration of ingredients in a product.

1.Actives and Inactives

Almost always, the ingredients will be listed in decreasing order of their concentrations (highest to lowest). In some cases, if a product contains actives (refer my first post of the series to know what is an active), the brand can and might list the actives along with their concentrations and this makes our job easier.

In USA, it is acceptable for a brand to list the inactive ingredients in alphabetical order if they list the actives separately along with concentrations. Though this isn’t common and I haven’t come across such a product, this point should be kept in mind.

2. The Order Matters

Since ingredients are listed in decreasing order of their concentration (highest to lowest), the ingredients which constitute most of the product appear at the top. The very first ingredient in products would be a solvent or carrier like water or propylene glycol.

Other ingredients which constitute 5% or less of the product are listed at the end. So if a product claims to contain Vitamin C or Niacinamide or natural extracts of your favorite fruit/plant, but is listed at the very bottom of the ingredients list, you should be alarmed about misleading advertising.

3. The First Five

The first five or six ingredients account for 75 – 90% of the product. The next four to five ingredients constitute 5 – 10%. These are the main ingredients which you must pay attention to. The rest of the ingredients would be preservatives, pH adjusters, colors and filler ingredients.

4. Filler Ingredients

Filler ingredients are used to mislead consumers to think that a product is more natural or beneficial than it really is. You can easily identify these fillers as they have the suffix “extracts” added to a natural ingredient. Eg. Lavender extracts, rose extracts, strawberry extracts etc. Brand use these filler ingredients to advertise their products using the word “contains”. Eg. “Contains the goodness of watermelon/ mango/ coconut” or “contains lavender extracts”.

Now, I am not saying that all natural extracts in a product are fillers. The natural ingredients and extracts which appear at the bottom of the ingredients are present in low concentrations (as low as 1 – 2%), especially the ones appearing after preservatives will be present in less than 1% concentration. These are what I refer as filler ingredients as they are used to mislead and false advertise.

Natural extracts used in such low concentrations are not going to deliver the benefits. For eg. If a product claims to contain shea butter but if shea butter appears at the end of the list, the moisturisation which you observe is not due to shea butter. It would be due to the presence of humectants and emollients like glycerin or other moisturizing agents which appear within the top ten ingredients.

5. Ingredients with concentration ≤ 1%

The ingredients appearing at the end of the list are usually in concentrations of 1% or lesser. These ingredients could be listed in any order.

To be more precise, the list of ingredients in descending order of their concentrations is maintained until they hit 1% concentration; after this, the order doesn’t matter. All the ingredients which are listed after fillers, preservatives and fragrances are probably present in 1% or lesser concentrations.

That’s enough theory for today. Now, shall we look at some practical examples and analyse the ingredients list of some of the products I own? Watch the below video on my Instagram page. This video might be little long, but it is definitely worth watching. Also, do follow me if you haven’t already🙏☺!

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This video contains examples of good product formulations and bad misleading advertisement regarding filler Ingredients. Please read post 2 of this series before watching this video to completely understand this content. . . Products mentioned in this video: 🍂@plumgoodness Choco Latte foot cream 🍂@aaranyaa_ Moringa oil Hand & Body cream 🍂@lotus_herbals Black Clay Face Mask 🍂@discovergbs Turkish Day Cream 🍂@jevabeauty Activated Charcoal & Argan Oil face pack . . . Hope you guys are enjoying this series. if so, please comment and let me know. . If you find this video to be useful and worthy, please do share it. It would mean a lot to me♥️. . . . #trystwithbeautytalks #trystwithbeauty #theingredientstalk #theingredient #theingredientstalkbytwb #theingredientguru #theingredients #theingredientjourney #letstalk #indianskincareblogger #indianblogger #skincareblogger #indianskincare #falseadvertising #misleading #plumgoodness #plumgoodnessproducts #chocolatte #lotusherbal #lotusherbalsindia #jevabeauty #activatedcharcoal #clayfacemask #facemask #clayfacemasks #alanna #globalbeautysecrets #discovergbs #makeupgirls20

A post shared by Tryst with Beauty (@trystwithbeauty) on Jun 21, 2020 at 8:22am PDT

What do you think about this post? I hope you learned something today! Please give me a thumbs up if you found this post to be useful. Do let me know if you are liking this new Ingredients Talk series.

Check out the first introduction post of this series – The Ingredients Talk – Post #1 – Components of a Cosmetic Product

Every moment is a fresh beginning!

-Vibhushitha.