The word 'Natural' in cosmetics means any substance derived from plans or animals or rock or minerals from our mother earth. this in its true form are often contaminated with a host of other substance which 1st must be removed to achieve the required purity before it can be used as ingredients in any form of personal care products.as opposed to the artificial substance that are made when substances are modified or altered by a chemical reactions in industrial processes, so with this in mind natural substance CAN be copied - totally possible!
so now the question is 'is it any better or worse? what difference does it make?'
the substances - the original and the artificial are actually identical. the artificial substance can be the mirror to its original. except that to the manufacturers, the next question would be 'which is more cost savvy and more convenient ?'
example 1#: methyl salicylate (oil of wintergreen)
its an important ingredients in many essential
oils extracted from variety of plants. it has the soothing, pain-killing properties and is used in ointments and liniments for rheumatic pains, strained muscles and toiletries. the manufacturer finds its cheaper and more convenient to synthesize methyl salicylate from raw materials obtained from coal or petroleum than extracting it from plants.
example 2#: Vanillin
it derived from vanilla pods and is an important fragrance and flavoring compound. it so happens to have a simple chemical structure and can be easily copied by chemists. naturally once copied they'll try to improve it. A simple conversion from vanillin into ethyl-vanillin, which has the same odor and flavor only 1000x more potent! nad in some factories those workers who uses this improved substance to a cosmetics or food productions usually wears a full environmental body suit because even the tiniest drop of this compound on their skin could leave them smelling like the cake factory for days!!
sooooo does this still means NATURAL is better?
naturally most people would have this presumption but in matter of fact, this may not be the case. Actually if we were to think about it logically, the so-called 'natural' products may have more chemicals than we could ever imagine because the rule is things that 'natural' things does not keep long. do you get where am i going with this? therefore chemists will put in more preservatives just to make sure that the product will have longer shelf life and very often than not teh harm that these preservatives can cause may out weight the benefits of the 'natural' ingredients can bring.
therefore instead of having question 'is this natural?' the more suitable and proper question should be 'are these chemicals added for my benefits or to the manufacturer's profits?' and if the answer is the latter, maybe you should start looking for another brand.
*** all pictures are for the purpose of illustration only***
pictures credit to i love natural cosmetics and tree hugger
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