What’s the first ingredient that you should look for when you're at the store and you're trying to determine if a product should go in your cart or not?

Because I know how it is. You're at Target and maybe you have a little one tugging on your sleeve saying “Mom, let's go this is so boring.” I know I've been there scanning ingredient labels in Target looking for something that is safe enough to bring home. Luckily, there are so many more options now than when my kids were little. But when there's more options, it creates more confusion.  

Brands have gotten even more clever with how they greenwash us. If you have gone to Target and gone to the “clean” section, you know, that special shelf that claims that the products are safer or that they're eco-friendly and been greenwashed, you know what I mean. Honestly, that's why I started this podcast, because there was so much greenwashing in the marketplace that I had to use my voice and share that it wasn't as safe as we thought it was.

If you're new here and you have no idea what greenwashing is, I will give you a quick definition. But you also should go back and listen to some of my greenwashing episodes. A great one is Episode 112, where I explain what organic really means, so that you're not getting greenwashed by the term organic. I also have an Episode Episode 96, where I share a friend's experience and how she was greenwashed. 

Greenwashing is basically when a product claims that it is green, or toxin-free or clean, when in reality, it isn't as clean as it should be. It's not as toxin-free as it should be and is likely not as eco-friendly as it claims to be. The best way to find products that are meeting your personal safety level is instead of looking at the front of the package is truly to turn that package around and read the ingredients on the back. Just like you would do for food, right? And I am not a dietician, so I don't talk about food a lot. But what I do know is that we need to pay attention to not only the food that we put in our bodies, but we also need to pay attention to the things that we put on our bodies. 

So what is that first ingredient that I look for when I scan an ingredient label? It's simple and the reason why it is the one that I look for first is because I know that if this ingredient is in there, then the company that creates the product is not being transparent and they are not sharing on the label every ingredient that is in the product. For me personally that lack of transparency means that I have a lack of trust in that company and in that product. 

So what is that ingredient? It is so simple. It is not a five syllable super long ingredient that you cannot pronounce. It is simply fragrance. Yes, fragrance. Also, natural fragrance, or derived from natural fragrance, or parfum. All of those words are basically the same thing on the ingredient label. 

The reason why this is the first ingredient that I look for is because of the lack of transparency within the term fragrance. Fragrance, the term itself or perfume or natural fragrance, all of those things, is a loophole in the laws in America. They say that that is a proprietary term so the company does not have to disclose what is within the fragrance. There have been studies done that show that there are 1000s of ingredients hiding within that one term fragrance.

So you may think, oh, fragrance isn't that bad. It's in the ingredients. But it doesn't smell that strong. It can't be that bad. And maybe it's not. But how do we know if they're not telling us? 

You may think it smells sort of citrusy so the only fragrance in there is some sort of lemon. In reality, it could be 1200 different chemicals making that lemon scent. How crazy is that?

I have a friend that works in the personal care products industry and she has shared with me that the way that this system works is companies buy fragrance from fragrance companies. And those fragrance companies are not required to disclose what's in their fragrance to the company that is buying it. So for example, let's just use, I don't know, let's just use the brand Dove. So they have fragrance in their body wash. They buy that ingredient from some other fragrance company. Dove then puts it in their body wash, they label their ingredients, they put fragrance on the ingredient label and they may not even know what ingredients slash chemicals are in that fragrance. 

Do you get this? Do you see how crazy this is? Do you see that we are mass producing these and putting these products out there on shelves where people trust that these products are safe. Yet the company that is putting it out there potentially doesn't even know what is in the product. It kind of blows my mind sometimes to think about this. 

Another reason I look for fragrance first is you'll often find if there's fragrance in there, there's going to be a bunch of other yucky stuff too that you don't want. So it can be as simple as just scanning the ingredient label for fragrance. 

Now do not get duped by the term, natural fragrance because that term isn't really regulated well either. Marketers may put that word natural in front of fragrance to greenwash you into thinking that it's natural, so it must be better. I don't believe it.

The other thing that I use as my compass for clean ingredients is my nose, I can smell it and I can tell whether something has fragrance in it or not like nobody else. 

The crazy thing about fragrances, once you detach it from your life, your nose is so much more sensitive, which you may think, that's not necessarily a good thing. But what I think is crazy is how much our sense of smell is impacted by these potentially harmful ingredients that are in our everyday products. And once you totally ditch all those scents, your nose will work better. 

Our sense of smell is one of the senses that is there to alert us right? If you think about smoke, that smell is alerting us to look for fire. That's why natural gas is scented to alert us that it's harmful and we need to get out of the house. 

Our sense of smell is really important and with fragrances, it is one of those things that we have the ability to smell it and know, hey, this isn't going to be good for me. If it's so strongly scented, there's no way this can be good for me. 

It's pretty crazy how that one simple term can really identify for you whether or not you should buy a product. 

As I said in last week's episode, why would we use harmful products when we know there are safe ones out there?