Saturday, September 5, 2009

Skin Deep. How deep are they really? How self proclamed experts become the experts in the eyes of a consumer.


These days more and more consumers turn to EWG (Environmental Working Group) aka Skin Deep for help and guidance about what skin care we put on our self, what type of plastic we use and so on... In general we do support their effort to educate consumer and highlight what is good for our health and what is....not so good.

However lately we've started noticing that all their work is starting to concentrate towards the bad, spreading panic and shock. Looking closer it turns out that there are a lot more bad then good on the market. Or pretty much everything. We can not use lipsticks because there is lead in them, we can not eat candy for the same reason, and there is some lead in the water too, so I am guessing we should stop drinking water too.

Sweetsation Therapy can not complain, our products rate very well on Skin Deep, but that's due to extensive research and use of the safest possible ingredients in our line, but some of the ratings still make us wonder why. I am going to place some examples here and let you be the judge. Even though most of our products rate
1-2 and only two of them rate 3, we believe that they still deserve a better rating. We contacted them numerous times asking to review our products or explain why they are rated higher then they should be, and even emailed comparable listings and still have not received any satisfactory explanation or correction.

So here are a couple of examples of our listings, and others, that have the same rating of
2:

Our Other
Our Other

How do they arrive to the total score nobody knows. We asked them if they have a formula they go by - still waiting for a response. So it seems like it depends whether you catch good or bad day.

Now, there is another very interesting research of theirs I've came across lately, is the ratings of Vitamins. We take vitamins every single day, whether it to be in a form of a pill or in our foods we eat. Let's look at that closer. Vitamins are good for us, we think. But according to EWG it is not quite so. For example, look at any ingredient label of anything from your refrigerator. Just pick the first thing you see. Look at the list of ingredients on the label. The first thing you will see, quite likely, is
Vitamin A, (supports vision) which is Retinyl Palmitate, rated 5 by Skin Deep. Raiting 5 By Skin Deep is considered to be Moderate Hazard, so that means that to support our vision we ingest moderate hazard every day, a few times a day. It is present in almost every type of jarred food. Moving on.. Vitamin C is rated 1. OK, fair enough. We don't see why it should be a hazard at all, but 1 is not too bad. Vitamin B or Panthenol is rated 2 to 4. This vitamin helps to produce hemoglobin, which is the component of your red blood cells that carry oxygen to your cells. So the vitamin that actually prevents the fatigue is a mild to moderate hazard. Another food ingredient that is very common to all the food we eat is: Citric Acid - rated 4.
If you already had a good time entertaining yourself by reading ingredient decks of your food items in your fridge, you probably are guessing the outcome. Stop eating. According to Skin Deep almost everything you are coming in contact with, is hazardous.

We are a proud signers of Compact of Safe Cosmetics but even we think that their so called "research" went too far. So how deep really is their research? Apparently, they base their rating decisions on results of testing done with
undiluted substances applied to human skin for 48 hours straight. Undiluted! Not the real tangible skin care products. We don't know of anyone who would apply anything undiluted to their skin for such a long time. But it's much easier, for sure, to sound an alarm, then actually go ahead and do a real research and testing. Shock treatment makes them an experts in the eyes of a consumer! An unfortunately there are a mass of people who just believe everything what they read. No questions asked. But you do try to ask them questions. And good luck getting an answer!

Environmental Working Group should educate themselves on the cosmetic industry before declaring themselves an authority on the industry. They should stop misleading consumers with their poor science and alarmist methods.

Why are we spending all this time sharing our insider knowledge? Because everyone deserves to know the truth and make educated and informed decisions. Good companies are being harmed all over the nation by EWG's twisted reports. During bad economic times the last thing these companies need to do is to lose sales over the misrepresentation of their products by Skin Deep and the Environmental Working Group. You need to educate yourselves with the truth about this organization and their regular misinformation propaganda.

So what's now? Are you going to quit wearing lipstick? Quit drinking water? Quit eating food? Use any type of skin care? Or quit listening to Skin Deep?

Your comments are welcome.



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