What exactly can we say on our labels?
Our industry of natural bath and body products have seen a wonderful surge in consumer offerings and demand. Over the years we’ve went from seeing 2 kinds of natural soap offered at a specialty health food store to entire stores filled to the brim with fabulous essential oil blends, facial products using age-old herbal tinctures to organic bath fizzing goodness with floating leaves of English gardens. An extraordinary advancement in a little span of time.
Consumers are demanding “healthy” body products and want to learn more about how good-for-you products and natural products are better for overall health. Education is power, right? Knowing more about ingredients and how they affect you health is what we want, right? Yes.
As we move forward this year into new products, new label design and overall focus on healthy and active skincare, we’re once again reviewing FDA regulations on just what can be printed on labels and just how much ingredient information we can provide.
The FDA has very specific rules about what can be on labels and marketing materials. Consumer protection is what we all want and demand. And we can see why such rules are in place. Take for example the early 19th Century when ingredients such as morphine, chloroform, and heroin were common place for cough and teething pain medicine. Beauty products have contained arsenic, radiation, and then there’s also mercury for the cure of blemishes. Yikes, I’m glad to have a blemish rather than birth defects and kidney failure.
No bad ingredients
Got it.
We don’t want them and we don’t use them.
So what’s the benefits of natural body care? There’s tons of benefits. But you need to know the “cosmetic” benefits and the “health” benefits are 2 very different descriptions. Cosmetic benefits are things like glowing skin, soft to the touch and smells heavenly. Health benefits would be saying that the product reverses cellulite, or relieves sore muscles or is an anti-aging product. Cosmetics (bath & body products) can not mention ANY health benefit or it would be considered a drug. They can ONLY mention cosmetic benefits. This goes for the ingredients too. So this means that no mention of an oil with anti-bacterial qualities. Or a sea salt that relieves bloat.
Consumers want and value education but labels and marketing materials from a cosmetic company can not list any health benefits of ingredients or the product itself. This is a very serious violation of FDA rules and requirements. We take this very seriously and know that we want all consumers to be informed but they must acquire that information from educational sources and not from our labels or marketing materials.
If you are a member of our wholesale team, then you know that we are providing you the most up to date information for your location. We will only design FDA compliant labels and marketing materials and never use any ingredients that we wouldn’t use ourselves or on our own family.
NONE OF THE BAD STUFF HERE!
We’ll be posting more about labels and ingredients in the coming months and in the mean time…take a look at your locations’ products. Are any making medical/health claims? Do any claim to heal or reverse a health issue? Take note and stay informed.
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