What Men Think About In the Shower

David’s Dilemma: For quite some time, I’ve been using High Endurance Body Wash by Old Spice, and decided to cut some steps and pick up the “new” Hair AND Body Wash. While in the shower I checked out the ingredients and they seem to be the EXACT same as the body wash. I read your post about similarities between body washes and shampoos, but are these formulas the exact same? Did I just pay for the words Hair AND Body wash? Please tell me they are slightly
different, besides the color of the liquid.

The Left Brain’s sobering reply:
David, I always wondered what the average male thinks about in the shower. But I never suspected that the answer is “Old Spice!” (The Spice Girls, maybe, but Old Spice?) Anyway, to answer your plea, yes they are SLIGHTLY different. For a comparison, here are the ingredient lists.

Old Spice Body Wash Ingredients

Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Sulfate, Fragrance, Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate, Lauryl Alcohol, Decyl Glucoside, DMDM Hydantoin, Lauryl Glucoside, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citric Acid, Polyquaternium 10, Green 3, Green 5, Red 33

Old Spice Shampoo + Body Wash Ingredients

Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Fragrance, Sodium Lauroamphoacetate, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Polyquaternium 10, Disodium EDTA, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Green 3, Red 33

3 differences between body wash and shampoo

First, there is a slightly different combination of the main detergents. This should make the shampoo version foam a bit more. Second, the shampoo version has less conditioning ingredients in it so it could be a bit more harsh on your skin. Third, they’ve changed the preservative in the shampoo using an ingredient called Kathon instead of DMDM Hydantoin. (You already pointed out the color difference!)

The Beauty Brains bottom line

There really isn’t much difference. In fact, I would suspect that if were given the products on a blinded basis, you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference between them. So yeah, you pretty much paid for the words. The regular body wash would work fine as a shampoo too.