Grace is not gullible: I’m watching QVC and they are featuring 100% Pure Cosmetics. Everything sounds so wonderful… earth based, all 100% natural,fruit pigmented, vegan friendly, no preservatives, no harmful chemicals, fragrance free, full of antioxidants, no animal testing, it is like organic food for your face, etc. etc. I’m wondering what is really in their products????
The Left Brain responds:
Good question, Grace. Looking at the ingredients in their products it appears that they do indeed have simplified, formulas that avoid the use of many traditional surfactants, preservatives, thickeners, and fragrances. How do they do this? By providing very basic formulas that rely on naturally-derived functional ingredients surrounded by a lot of non-functional natural ingredients that sound good but don’t really do anything.
100% Pure ingredients
For example, here is their ingredient list 100% Pure Organic Lavender Foaming Shower Gel.
All Natural Ingredients: Organic Lavender Hydrosol, Organic Lavender Honey, Gentle Coconut Cleanser (coco betaine), Organic extracts of Jasmine, Chamomile, Calendula and Rose, Organic White Tea, Organic Lavender Essential Oil, Vitamin E (a-tocopherol), Vitamin C (ascorbyl palmitate), Natural Food Preservatives from salt and cranberries (less than 0.1% of Sodium Benzoate, Potassium sorbate)
They take some liberties with the labeling guidelines and try to hide the ingredients that actually make the product work. If you strip away the nonsense you get…
Water, Coco Betaine, Salt, Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate
These ingredients are found in many other products. Coco betaine is chemically derived from coconut oil and is a very close cousin of cocamidopropyl betaine which is found in almost all mass market shampoos and cleanser. While it’s milder than some other foaming agents (like sodium lauryl sulfate) it is also not as effective of a cleanser.) Interestingly, they say their products contain no preservatives but then they have Sodium Benzoate & Potassium Sorbate which are both preservatives.
Go figure.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
I’m sure these are fine products but they aren’t any better for you than the much less expensive products you can buy at your local grocery store. It’s really your choice – if you like these products then buy them. But don’t be tricked into buying them just because 100% Pure tells you they’re more natural.
What do YOU think? Would you be willing to sacrifice performance just to get a product that’s more “natural?” Leave a comment and share your thoughts and concerns with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
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I agree with Heather, read and and ask questions. Use common sense and your own judgment. I just made an online purchase of some of 100% Pure’s skin care and cosmetic items. I also, bought a body cream and wash today from Ulta. It took me months before I decided to buy from this company. Making sure I wasn’t allergic to any of the ingredients and between all the negative and positive comments posted everywhere whats a girl to do. But say what the hell and try it out for myself and decide if I like it.
Now as far as the whole “natural” thing most of the “stuff” that I can read and have looked up if I did not understand seem pretty natural to me off their ingredients lists. Even if it came from a natural source this I’m ok with. As long as it’s not 50 letters long and will not give some type of cancer 10 to 20 years down the line I’m cool with it. At least 100% Pure is another natural company out there that we have an option to choose from. To each there own
O and all ya’ll having trouble with the whole customer service thing. Have you ever thought that you might be a bad customer? Didn’t your mommy teach you how to speak to people. You’ll get a lot further in life with sweetness. I just saying.
If anyone is looking for all natural, chemical free, high performance cosmetics made in Canada check out http://www.Bellaphoria.com
Their Foundation is amazing, it can clear acne in less than a week, and prevents acne all together, it is so light weight you don’t even feel that you are wearing it, and it covers very well. I am really hooked on the concealer sticks too. The concealers and lipsticks are made with cold pressed food grade oils. It’s the only cosmetics that I don’t have any reactions to…
It’s amazing that someone can make a defamatory statement about a company and product that they know nothing about. Hope you have good insurance to cover you when one of these companies finally sues you. Love the comments from proclaimed experts. You are all entertaining. Hope you have good insurance too. BTW insurance does not cover intentional harm, so that will be out of your own pocket. I am not affiliated with 100% Pure Cosmetics, but I used some of the products and they are well made. Why don’t you talk to the company before you start writing out of you ass. Your type keeps attorneys real busy with work these days. You should rename this The Beauty Idiot.
Hi guys, I hope all of you commenting, both positively and negatively about 100% Pure foundation have actually tried it. I switched to 100% Pure foundation (liquid) in December 2010 from Laura Mercier foundation and my skin has gotten better, no more cystic acne. In fact, when I take it off at night, my skin is no longer grayish in hue with red and purple patches, especially my chin which was full of cystic bumps and acne blemishes. WHen I take off the foundation my skin looks more like it does when I wake up in the morning–fresh and almost dewy, although not quite perfect (likely the stress of daily life).
However, I have a couple of questions about oxidation of the product since everyone is talking about preservatives and all that. In December, the color once applied to my face, was perfect, I didn’t need powder and it still looked good, not cakey and as if the color was separating and patchy at the end of the night. Now, during these past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that the color looks a little darker straight from the bottle, and then darkens even more on my face and also turns splotchy after a few hours of application, but when I first began using it in December, it would make my face velvet and smooth with even and consistent color. It would look awesome at the end of the night. Now it turns splotchy orange by noon, and I didn’t have this problem as pronounced as this before with all the chemically laden foundation brands I’ve tried. Note that my skin was oilier in December (it was raining almost every to everyother day here in the east bay, bay area, northern CA) but now is drying out due to weather changes. I have also tried a couple of other more “natural brands” this past month in January, such as Fresh and Tarte, and they also have been oxidizing on my face, turning it dark and orange. Also note, the 100% Pure foundation in the container looks slightly darker than I remembered when I first got it. Can anyone explain the orange-ish hue and also if these so called “natural” brands have the tendency to change color in the bottle? Please let me know and thanks in advance!.
First of all…..every single *bad* review I have read does not have a citation for their facts, if they are indeed facts. And second of all, some of the un-cited *facts* that I have read are totally bogus and definitely not well researched.
A company, ANY company, whether or not they are organic, cannot *skip* ingredients on their ingredients list. I will repeat that. CANNOT. Simply put, it is illegal. http://www.fda.gov/food/foodingredientspackaging/ucm094211.htm#qalabel
A company is allowed to *classify*, as in, if there are many different spices or artificial colors in a product, then they can be generalized on the ingredients label as, simply, *spices* or *artificial colors*. In this way, anyone with reading skills can determine when something is generalized. However, an ingredient cannot be *skipped*. At all. If it is in the product, it is in the label. Another point, and this is with the original article itself, when you are reading an ingredients list, you are reading from TOP to BOTTOM of what the product is mostly made of. For example, if the first ingredient is rose hydrosol, then that makes up most of the product and so forth and so on to the bottom of the list. So, you cannot, in all honesty, say that “take those away and this is what you get” as you did in this post.
Furthermore, there are MANY natural preservatives. I don’t know who came up with the nonsense that “if there are preservatives, it is NOT natural”…..but they need to do a little research and it will certainly clarify that ridiculous notion. Vitamin E, or tocopherol, is a natural preservative. This Vitamin E can also be gluten free whenever a company chooses to cold press it from rice bran. Salt is a natural preservative and also goes by the name “sodium chloride”…..but that big fancy name does not mean it is not natural. Sugars are natural preservatives, and while too many sugars are not great if it is ingested, sugar is still natural. When I was little, I actually broke off a sugarcane growing in a field and tasted it for myself. Natural. By natural, I mean naturally occurring which means it is not cooked up in a lab. This is also the reason why completely natural products do not last quite as long as the chemical-laden ones on the drugstore shelves. They have a shorter shelf life and so are produced in smaller batches. This is worth it if you are serious about kicking the chemicals and using something truly natural.
http://www.naturalhealthnbeauty.com/natural_preservatives.htm
As for the questions on whether or not it is a great thing to put fruits and vegetable on your skin as opposed to eating them…..well, I have not gone as far as researching that, so I do not feel comfortable answering. I can offer an *opinion* however, and I assume that if I can eat it without it being toxic, then I can put it on my skin. One thing that I will point out is the fact that 100% pure have found and patented a way to keep the fruits and vegetables from “oxidizing” which of course would be where you would want to be concerned about putting it on your skin.
I have provided links to all the resources I used to comfortably write this post. I did not do any “guessing” or falsely claiming in this post.
Who am I? I am nobody. I am simply a stay-at-home, health-concerned mom who is also a full time student. But I have learned the merits of conducting *fact-based research*. And the information is not secret. It is out there for anyone to read. Good luck to all!
Bonnie posted on Feb 2009, read her post, this is my favorite post on this discussion. I discovered EWG.org a year or so ago, check it out, very interesting information.
I use the 100% Pure coconut body scrub and the blood orange body cream. I love the way it makes my skin look and feel. I also just started using Eminence products. If I could afford to be Eminence exclusive I would. I’ve found 100% Pure to be a great medium, less expensive than Eminence, but still a good product.
Anything put on your skin absorbs into your blood stream. Fact. If you have questions about an ingredient go to EWG.org and get the details.
i dont think that those “preservatives” on that sample list you posted are bad if they are naturally derived…they are not synthetic or harmful like parabens and such so i am totally fine with a natural preservative….like salt for instance can perserve fish or other meats
Hi
I am a radiologist in India. most of these so called organics have
titanium dioxides, manganese ect the only natural products available are biotique and forestessentials in India.I hope they launch makeup products soon!
I buy their lip products because they do not used crushed beetles (AKA Carmine) in their pigments. So, whatever typical ingredients they use other than Carmine is fine with me. Crushed insects on my lips or anywhere near my body is NEVER OKAY and that’s something almost every mainstream brand does not agree with.
I find this article extremely irritating. People that have not tried or have no idea what they are talking about and I am so thankful for people like Suzie who make it possible to have these wonderful top quality products that are very safe available for people like me. Trying to scare people out of using organic or natural products with no facts to back them up is very irresponsible. I will ignore all this nonsense and continue to use their products exclusively. They speak for themselves. AMAZING!!!
Cheers,
didn’t they recently change their surfactant from coco betaine to potassium cocoate? The local seller claims so and the ingredient list on their site states it is “Saponified Coconut Oil” but I don’t know what there is on the bottle…
OK, so in an answer they emailed me, the company said to change the ingredients on http://www.100percentpure.eu/ to an INCI form within a week.
Wait and see…
I speak as a chemist and also as a organic consumer.
This is a very misleading company. Their products cannot be 100% natural if they use “coco betaine”, which is not even its full name (of this synthetic chemical). Yes, a body wash must foam and therefore have a chemical detergent, but there are better dertegents than coco betain. Decyl glucoside is milder and better for your skin.
Also a cream must use an emulsifier, even if its a natural one like lecithin or rice bran, but they don’t disclose any (and upon contact defend themselves saying it is patent property). If its a cream and an emulsifier is not disclosed in list of ingredients, then they are misleading consumer by hidding some ingredients. So shameful.
Companies like Weleda, Aubrey or Dr Brown are much better. Much more honest and even better for your skin.
I WOULD NEVER want to sacrifice an effect product for something more “natural”. I hope the technology behind the products keeps advancing and it is okay to me that they test on animals but I will be happy when we don’t need to do that. I would rather see innovation than fluff.
I bought several items (granddaughter’s wish list) from this company and was happy to receive the package the day before Christmas but was very unhappy with one of their items. Tried to explain the problem to customer service, giving them all the information they needed. After several back and forth e-mails, they wanted me to send the item back
after giving me irrelevant explanations about texture & consistency,etc.
(issue: it obviously contained less than the amount stated because the tube of conditioner was flat and much lighter compared to the tube of shampoo supposedly with the same weight) …… and will get a credit if and when I make another purchase…… … and why will I spend more money returning the product? Well, I won’t again buy from this company who obviously do not care about “return customers”.
There are other pure and organic cosmetic companies out there who will take better care of their customers!
Do not deal with this company – they do not care.
Read up and research on the ingredients of their products before committing to buy!
This is bull shit, I finally got the prod in the mail, opened the box and there was a whole different product, and they don’t even sell that prod online
I should like to make people aware of the dangers of leaving kiddies in chlorinated pools for a long time. Chlorina inhibits the absorption of vitamin D/calcium. Very dangerous and depending on the amount of chlorine and the heat of the pools, especially jacuzzis, you can suddenly lack vitamin D3 to a dangerous extent.
Please can you give us the chance to email this to friends so they can enjoy The Beauty Brain as I am not interested in joining any social network.
Excellent suggestion! I’ll have our IT guy look into it.
I just read someone’s post that if it’s posted on QVC it must be true as the FCC requires truth and wouldn’t let them say it. Seriously Dorothy? You must live in Kansas (no insult intended to any native Kansan’s out there) but the FCC has NOTHING to do with truth in advertising. The FCC monitors only content for morality, language, nudity, etc. They really have no power to enforce “truth in advertising”.
Don’t believe anything simply because it’s advertised on TV or the internet. Do your homework. Don’t blindly trust any manufacturer as they have a huge incentive to deceive you…profits. An informed consumer is a wise one.
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