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Nyambura said:
Delightful Flame ~
I'm sorry you had this experience with Elucence. It's one of my favorite brands, along with Aubrey Organics. You had asked SG what Aubrey Organics included to make its products less than 100% natural/organic. I'm a bit cynical when it comes to mass-marketed "all natural" or "all organic" personal care lines because:
1. "Natural" claims are not regulated by the FDA. No federal legal definition of "natural" currently exists; therefore, cosmetics companies can make term "natural" or even "all natural" to mean anything they want. Besides, by the time a plant substance is added to a cosmetic, gets preserved, stabilized and mixed with other ingredients, it loses most, if not all, of its natural characteristics...there's no way it can remain identical to what came out of the ground. (
See FDA Consumer magazine, May-June 1998, rev. May 1998, Aug. 2000.)
2. Aubrey Organics has <font color="red">repeatedly run afoul of required FDA labeling regulations,</font> not only for making claims that would reclassify certain of its products as drugs, instead of as merely cosmetics, but also for <font color="red">listing natural ingredients on its label that did not exist in its formulas and the FDA found ingredients in Aubrey Organics' formulas that were not listed on its labels!</font> Repeated FDA investigations for non-compliance and inaccuracy of ingredient labeling does not bode well.
FDA Warning Letter I have no idea what, if anything, AO has done to bring its products into compliance, but if its past performance (or lack thereof) is any indication...it's not good.
Marketing products as purely cosmetics, when some of them fall under the government definition for drugs, is misleading...and a bit troubling. How do we know they're safe and/or effective? AO did not run the requisite drug tests to insure such an outcome. Notably, the FDA standard for drugs is much stricter and more rigorous than the standard applied to cosmetics. AO's repeated violations in this area do not bode well for those who rely solely on the label for information (which is normally a reasonable thing to do).
AO has done an impressive job of getting many distributors (online and IRL) to parrot its press releases, but what the U.S. government and the industry trade rag reveal tells another story entirely. AO's FDA inspections were the subject of
The Rose Sheet, an industry newsletter (warning: you have to pay for membership). Also, not good.
3. Regulatory violations aside, the "natural" preservatives AO uses - Citrus seed extract with vitamins A, C, & E - have their own issues, mainly stability problems...which means relying solely on those ingredients to preserve the integrity of your product is a hit-or-miss proposition. In addition, none of those ingredients were listed on the FDA website as antimicrobial (i.e., fight bacteria).
...so all of this leads me to wonder:
<ul type="square"> [*]How "natural" is Aubrey Organics - if it's leaving ingredients out of its printed label? [*]...and just as importantly, has included natural ingredients on its labels that aren't in its formulas? [*]How safe is AO if its preservatives have a well-known history of instability? [*]How safe is AO without any proven antimicrobial ingredients? [*]...Notably, I've had *no* problems with deteriorating AO products, which leads me to wonder exactly what ingredients AO left off the list? [/list]
Given these concerns, it's up to each of us to determine whether to continue using certain products, or even certain brands. I, for one, love how Elucence and Aubrey Organics products perform on my hair and I am willing to risk exposure to the chemical compounds (Elucence) and the unknown (AO) until I learn otherwise.
Sorry this post was so long! Just wanna help!
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Thanks for the info! That was very eye opening!
