“Excuse me, what is hydroxymethylglycinate? Is it even a word? It doesn’t seem to have enough vowels?” I asked a bewildered shop assistant, who was eyeing me with concern.
To be fair, I was clutching three jars of ‘natural’ moisturiser and having already spent 20 minutes in the face cream aisle of a beauty chain store, I was becoming increasingly frustrated at my inability to understand the ingredients contained in skin care products.
Everything I read sounded either like a Latin name for an obscure Mexican plant or the aftermath to a chemical waste disaster.
I wasn’t just reading the labels for myself, I had learned I was pregnant only days beforehand. I’d just as soon realised, there really is nothing like pregnancy to make you (panic and become) acutely aware of everything going into your mouth and onto your skin.
Switching to natural products for my nails, face, hair and body seemed like an easy enough task but it instead led me to many fruitless (and frustrating) shopping trips and internet searches. I knew parabens were bad and had heard about the three nasties to avoid in nail polishes but finding out what was safe in skin care was a lot trickier to determine.
As a pre-teen I would spend most of my pocket money on natural skincare: cucumber toners, apricot scrubs, avocado moisturisers. I was devastated when that brand dropped their skin care line, and since then had never found just one type of skin care to ever be that loyal to again. I’d often mix and match brands and mostly go back to a cheap pharmacy brand that seemed gentle on my sensitive and rosacea prone skin. Until of course I discovered there were many chemical nasties in it.
Lost in the confusing maze of parabens, petro-chemicals and sulfates I did discover one good thing. An app (Cosmetifique) containing a searchable database of over 5,000 ingredients with a handy traffic light rating system to help determine the good from the bad. Oh that and hydroxymethylglycinate? Big red traffic light.
