How to read a ingredient list on your beauty products

On every cosmetic or beauty product you purchase you will find a label with a list of ingredients with long difficult sounding names, and most likely you do not know what they are and what they do. In this post I would like to give a few tips on how to read a cosmetic ingredient list. 

Learning how to read an ingredient list is very important for several reasons. By knowing which ingredients are used in a product you can avoid those that could potentially cause allergies or irritations. Additionally a lot of products claim to contain natural ingredients or vitamins, but if you look at the list of ingredients you may some times be surprised to find that the concentration of these substances is so low that it is not beneficial at all. Therefore why pay a higher price for products which only claim to be good for you? And once you understand how certain substances work you will be able to find more suitable or maybe even cheaper alternatives.

Reading an ingredient list you will notice that the ingredients are named using their scientific name, and for plants their Latin name. This is a requirement of the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI) system. Sometimes additionally the English name of the substance is given in parenthesis. 

The order of the substances on an ingredient list is based on their concentration in the product. On the top of the list you will find ingredients which are present in a higher amount. If the concentration of a substance is below 1% in can be listed in any order. Usually fragrances, dyes, and preservatives are present in the product in such low concentrations. 

Usually you will notice that the synthetic substances are on the top of the ingredient list and the natural ingredients (such as say argan oil) are at the bottom of the list. Natural ingredients usually have a concentration under 1%, because natural ingredients are generally more expensive and less effective than synthetic ones. Therefore cosmetic companies put only small amounts of them in a product.

Sometimes at the bottom of the ingredient list you will notice a magical "and other ingredients". Certain ingredients are considered secret and cosmetic companies are not required to reveal them on the ingredient list.