Safety with your skin care shouldn't involve compromise, but sadly, many people trust the efficacy of mass-produced synthetic products and feel that they are having to compromise with results, if they use natural products, if they want to have something that isn't going to disrupt their endocrine system, or cause some other type of harm from all the dissonant chemicals, including a boatload of preservatives. The truth is, however, there is very little evidence (if any) that those chemical-laden, potentially dangerous products with lab-created retinols,AHA's, hyaluronic acid, peptides etc are actually getting results. While some of these ingredients do have some science to back them up, the products themselves can actually use any amount of any of these ingredients and say their product contains the ingredient...even if it doesn't contain enough to do anything at all. Believe me, this happens a LOT. Unfortunately consumer trust will oftentimes rest with the product with the biggest marketing budget, assuming that since they can afford to knock your socks off with splashy ads, beautiful famous spokesmodels and a team of research scientists, they must know what they're doing. They DO know what their doing, but maybe that's not the right question to ask.
A better question might be, "Do they have my best interest as a priority?" And a quick look at Google will answer that with a headline about Johnson & Johnson's $300 million ovarian cancer lawsuit settlement, or Bayer's $2 billion (with a 'b") Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma lawsuit...Loreal, St. Ives, Almay, Ulta, Suave, Philosophy, Burt's Bees, and Aveeno all also have recent class-action lawsuits for misleading the public. 1
So, the answer to that question is a resounding, "No".
We want to change that. We believe our customers are smart and want to be educated about the safety as well as the efficacy of the products they use on their face and body, as well as *in* their body. We've been fed enough greed-driven b.s., and it's time to get real. So I'm taking the initiative to educate consumers.
Because we strive to be as transparent as possible, we use citations to medical journals to back up what we tell you. We have even gone so far as to do something unprecedented in this industry – making the statement that all of our products contain at least 5% of our active botanical extracts (our serum contains even more) Plus, we use no fillers, and our oils are organic and unrefined so as to preserve the natural active compounds in them. Using refined and/or fractionated oils, which is industry standard, compromises the integrity of the oil by stripping away its nutrients and making it necessary to add them back in in the form of synthetic compounds designed to mimic the effects of what they removed. This also facilitates the need for preservatives because the natural preservatives inherent in the raw state, have been removed and the resulting product has been chemically altered to become unrecognizable from the natural product. Besides this, another reason mass-produced skin care products require heavy preservatives is because they are mass-produced and may sit in a warehouse for a long time.
This may sound strange that cosmetic and skincare companies would used stripped down versions of perfectly good oils, but there are a few reasons and it actually gets a little bit complicated: First reason, bottom line:
You can make more money this way. But lets unravel this a bit more to understand how.
When you use fractionated and refined oils, you are using a product that was inferior to the organic, unrefined product to begin with. To give an example, I'll use coconut oil, since we use a lot of it, and it is a favorite among many people who look for natural alternatives. Right up front, I'll tell you, we don't eat it, nor do we recommend eating it, for a few reasons we've addressed in another blog post about coconut oil, which you can find in our archives. Just like sugar is not going to do you any favors when you eat it (except give you a temporary rush of endorphins perhaps), it has great effects when used on the skin.
The coconut oil we use in all Bianca-Blake skin care is organic & unrefined. The process by which this is made, is to scoop the fresh coconut meat out of the shell, and cold press it, leaving just the oil, which has a pleasant coconut aroma and flavor. It is also the source of many wonderful phytonutrients including Vitamin E, which acts as a natural preservative, giving it a shelf life of about 5 years.
Refined coconut oil is produced by copra - leaving the dried meat, kernel and shells in the sun for days, and then extracting the resultant oil. Copra is a low-value commodity and it has found a great use in the beauty industry...because it's cheap and people can easily confuse it with the more valuable, organic, unrefined version. Make no mistake though, it is a far inferior product compared to its counterpart. Copra is classified as Dangerous Goods, Class 4.2, substances liable to spontaneous combustion. ... IMDG Code describes Copra as Dried kernels of coconuts, with a penetrating rancid odor which may taint other cargoes. To make it into your skincare products, it must also undergo "deodorization"...because of its characteristic rancid smell.
The most important distinction between these two dissimilar sounding products, comes at the very beginning of the process. Organic, unrefined (or sometimes called "virgin") coconut oil is always derived from fresh coconuts...ie, the prime coconuts. While the refined version is produced by copra, which is essentially a method to utilize what would otherwise go to waste. So there you have it, Beauty vs Garbage. 2
The fractionating process further corrupts any redeeming qualities of the coconut through a crystallization process of separating by soluability through temperatures, in order to achieve a certain viscosity. The motive for this is in anticipating a certain consistency desired by the average customer, without regard to utilization of the pristine organic nature and bioavailability of the product's nutrients in its most natural state. So basically, it's a vehicle to create a certain texture and moisturizing effect, and nothing more.
The problem with this, is that it has been adulterated and has absolutely no redeeming value other than than for aesthetic purposes. Because the process involves high temperatures which strip away nutrients, chemically synthesized preservatives such as tocopherol, are routinely added back in to re-stabilize an unstable product, which was created using inferior material to begin with. It is NOT the same as organic, unrefined oil, and it will never contain the same, high quality nutrients, because it is not even derived from the same initial material.
