Fate for Breakfast
As fate would have it, a magazine on the table at my Dad’s place happened to be faced down on the table with a full page spread by a New Zealand company espousing it’s products as Paraben Free, have no artificial perfumes and aren’t tested on animals.
Its packaging has just the right amount of white to suggest a clean heart and a lid and labeling in a shade of green that suggests a rainforest devoid of non-natural anything. Gotta love it right? Yes, the New Zealand public and others did. Infact they loved the products and the brand so much they were voted last years winners of the Best Green/Natural Product in a major New Zealand Women’s magazine. All of which looks good in the Media section of a brand’s website for sure.
It would be fair to say, I’ve become a label-reading maniac, one that circumvents market spin to get to the guts of a matter. Call me cynical but in a product line up of some of the usual suspects, I went into their online shop and clicked on their Body Butter product. No special reason, just that it was centre stage and looked clickable. Actually it was because it was big and EVERYONE knows that BIG is everything. Let’s all roll our eyes now!
Speaking of eyes, mine were met with that literary triune of marketing salve: “100% Paraben Free, Natural Based and No Artificial Colourings”. At this point I’m beating back the monster cynic that’s somehow attached itself to my personna of late. I ask it to play nicely but you know, with the exception of a Sesame Street liddle red one with his ‘sometimes food’ messages, monster cynic ones grow big on the sniff of an avocado oily rag.
So, I’m reading the label, as I’m want to do these days and just IMAGINE. I felt the monster within instantly put on 10kgs when I read the list of ingredients: Spring Water (Aqua), Glycerine (Glycerin), Octyl Palmitate, Sweet Almond Oil (Prunus Dulcis), Ethythexl Alcohol, Glyceryl Stearate, Dimethicone, Ceteareth-20, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Sodium Polyacrylate, Shea Butter (Butyrospermum Parkii), Coco Butter (Theobroma Cocao), Avocado Oil (Persea Gratissima), PEG- 120 Stearate , Jojoba Oil (Simmomdsia Cheinensis), Manuka Honey (Leptospermum Scoparium Mel), Phenoxyethanol, 1, 2-Hexanediol & 1, 2-Octanediol, Tocopherol Acetate, Retinyl Palmitate, Orange Oil (Citrus Aurantium Dulcis). Impressive line up huh!
So I work with words alot, and when you do that you get into the habit of reading between the lines when you read someone elses. To satisfy that three o’clock hunger pang I felt the cynic monster’s stomach having I casually took a look at some random facts about some of those ingredients.
I mean, let’s take, oh the Ceteareth-20 for argument’s sake. In the US, “it’s classified as a penetration enhancer that alters skin structure allowing chemicals to penetrate deeper into the skin. It increases the amount of toxins that reach the bloodstream”. Hmmm, sounds completely natural! Whattya you think?
The PEG-2 Stearate is a synthetic polymer made from oxirane (ethylene oxide) and fatty acids and acts as an emulsifier/opacifier. This one gets to have a little red box with a black ‘x’ marks the spot in it indicating “the international chemical hazard symbol that there’s a potential risk associated with this ingredient.
It could be a mild irritant or cause allergic reactions or adverse skin reactions, it could be potentially toxic or carcinogenic, or there may be a risk of contamination with harmful by-products which are formed during manufacture. It could also indicate that there are restrictions on the use of the ingredient. The omission of this symbol however doesn’t imply that an ingredient is safe for all individuals.” Synthetic? You know the last time I peeked synthetic meant, man-made. Be still cynic monster within!
So here’s my monster mashup today. Why not just leave out the words that don’t actually apply, like Natural. I know, I know, I’m being slow! Natural sells. But might I just ask, at what cost? Have the New Zealand public been sucker punched? Now, we know about the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) in business, what about the Quadruple Bottom Line (QBL). How might a company mean that?
Well, maybe the REAL bottom line is if companies here in New Zealand cut the spin and say what they mean in their advertising and at least try to mean what they say. A little Fate for Breakfast? How hard can that be?
