Book Excerpt -- Green Beauty Recipes by Julie Gabriel

In the mood for a little reading? Soon I will be posting a review on Julie Gabriel’s (author of The Green Beauty Guide) new book, Green Beauty Recipes. Can’t wait!

Today I have posted an article on Feelgood Style about emulsifying ingredient, vegetable emulsifying wax. Actually, it is a follow-up to an article I wrote on the ingredient a while back. After several questions and concerns cropped up over the article, and the ingredient itself, I decided to do a little more research to try and clear up the issue of safety concerning this ingredient. One expert I contacted for further info was Julie. Following is an excerpt from her new book outlining the details on safe cosmetic emulsifiers, including emulsifying wax.

Extracted from GREEN BEAUTY RECIPES: Easy Homemade Recipes to Make your Own Organic and Natural Skincare, Hair Care, and Body Care Products by Julie Gabriel (June 2010, available from Amazon.com).

Natural Emulsifiers

Emulsifiers are substances that are used to blend oils and water together to create a cream or a lotion by surrounding oil with tiny droplets and forming a protective layer so that the oil molecules cannot stick together. This way, an emulsion is formed. You can make it thicker by adding more emulsifier or thinner by using less emulsifier. Sometimes you may even feel like adding an emulsifier to a facial toner so that you’d be able to add more essential oils without causing oil puddles at the surface! Egg yolk, honey, and mustard are common food emulsifiers.

Emulsifier is one ingredient that can make or break even the most natural product made with highest quality oils and mineral water. That’s why if you plan to make creams, lotions, cleansers, and body creams you need to make sure that your emulsifier is fail-safe and perfectly green.

Polysorbate and ceteareth (followed by a number) are frequently used in so-called organic beauty products, but these ingredients are not natural, and I do not recommend using them in your green beauty preparations. Polysorbate 20 is a polyoxyethylene derivative of sorbitan monolaurate, and ceteareth is a polyoxyethylene ether of cetyl alcohol or stearyl alcohol. You can use cetyl alcohol in your beauty products without any added petrochemical residue.

Emulsifying wax may sound natural but in fact, it is anything but green and is certainly not natural. In fact, emulsifying wax is made of cetearyl alcohol, Polysorbate 60 (a petrochemical), PEG-150 stearate (another petrochemical), and Steareth-20 (yet another petrochemical). There’s absolutely no reason to use this blend of synthetic chemicals in your natural beauty products!

Please note: if the ingredient name is followed by the initials NF, this means that it conforms to the specifications of the National Formulary, manual containing a list of medicines that are approved for prescription throughout the country. So far, 156 countries have national or provincial essential medicines lists and 135 countries have national formulary manuals. NF often appears before “Emulsifying Wax” which may add importance but not naturalness to this ingredient.

Another emulsifier to avoid is borax (sodium borate.) A recent research shows it may be carcinogenic, and evidence based research confirms that it is very irritating and even allergenic. It also dries out delicate, mature skin, and is not recommended for use on children.

Now, even more bad news. Most emulsifiers used in cosmetic products are derived from animal fat. These days, legislation does not require listing the source of an emulsifier, just their chemical names, and these give no clue whether the emulsifier is derived from pig fat or not. So you can imagine how much pig fat goes into so-called natural and conventional beauty products! If you see the word “stearate” in your ingredient list, there’s a chance that the emulsifier was made from animal tallow, unless clearly labeled as vegetable.

And even if the emulsifier is plant-based, it cannot be certified organic, so to call a facial cream 100 percent organic is misleading, to say the least. The best vegetable emulsifiers are derived from coconut or palm oils which can be certified organic, of course, but during chemical processing all the organic benefits simply vanish. Using fairtrade raw materials is ethical but has hardly any influence on the quality of the emulsifier.

Glyceryl monostearate (glyceryl stearate) is a glycerol ester of stearic acid derived from shea or coconut butter. Make sure this emulsifier is marked as vegetarian before buying! Stearic acid can also be derived from animal tallow. If avoiding animal ingredients is important to you, double-check with the manufacturer using contact information available online or on the packaging.

Cetyl alcohol is a popular natural emulsifier that is very easy to use. It is a fatty alcohol derived from vegetable oils such as palm oil and coconut oil. It is petroleum-free and is completely natural. Cetyl alcohol is more suitable for thicker creams intended for use on dry, delicate, mature skin.

Sucrose laurate, a sugar esther of plant fatty acids, is my favorite plant-based emulsifier, and it is amazingly easy to use! Simply pour into the oil and add some water to get a wonderfully runny cream for an oilier or mixed complexion. And the best thing, it is approved for use in organic products by Soil Association, an organic certifying body in the United Kingdom.

Sodium stearoyl lactylate is made with lactic (milk) acid, stearic acid (make sure it’s vegetable!) and then treated with sodium or calcium hydroxide. It must be used only in fat-in-water emulsions.

Cetearyl glucoside is made of corn-derived glucose and plant fatty alcohols. It is another failsafe emulsifier that is more suitable for products intended for use on mixed or oily complexions, and on the body.

Making your own facial creams, lotions, and cream cleansers is the best way to avoid animal fat and petrochemicals in your beauty products.

Image:  Pensiero at Flickr.com, Creative Commons license.