Don't Cover Up with CoverGirl

Don't let the excessive Photoshopping or sweet smiles fool you; CoverGirl is hardly a brand that warrants enthusiasm.  For a little clarification as to why, here’s the promised review of CoverGirl cosmetics, courtesy of Skin Deep Cosmetic Database:

CoverGirl

Unlike the previously reviewed Maybelline, CoverGirl only boasts ONE safely-rated product, its Cover FX Powder and Mineral Foundation.  The brand’s other products – all 918 of them – fall within a hazardous 3-9 range.  Interestingly enough, the majority of its cosmetics include a variety of foundations, all of which are liquid, and all of which are considered unsafe given their ingredients (with the exception of the Cover FX Powder and Mineral Foundation, which is a pressed powder foundation).

When transitioning to more natural and safe cosmetics and skin care, you’ll find it’s rather difficult finding a liquid foundation that is formulated with safe ingredients, even more so a liquid foundation that is both safe AND effective.  In having sampled several, I’ve found that many offer little coverage, if any, and are often rather greasy, having substituted conventional chemical additives for botanical oils.  In the former’s case, these conventional ingredients provide the easily applicable liquid consistency.  In the latter’s, plant oils and extracts must be utilized in such a way as to achieve a liquid consistency similar to that of their conventional counterparts.  Unfortunately, however, formulating natural liquid foundations with oil as a base offers little in the way of easy application or adequate coverage.  Even so, that’s not to say that both safe and effective liquid foundations don’t exist.  It simply necessitates trial-and-error, which natural/organic cosmetics companies are more than willing to cater to.  Unlike more well-known brands that require you commit to the purchase of a full-sized product if you want to try it out, companies like Alima Pure offer samples of ALL their products for very reasonable prices, along with the assurance that what you’re sampling is completely safe to use.   

Are you sure you want to use that?

Popular cosmetic giants like Maybelline and CoverGirl are among many prevalent brands women turn to for their particular beautification needs.  For many, cosmetics are simply a means to an end – looking good and feeling good about it.  Women are far more concerned with the effectiveness of their make-up rather than what’s actually used to produce it.  Professed to complement our natural features and preserve our appearance, ironically, most well-known cosmetic companies opt for ingredients that do little in the ways of accomplishing this.  For all you ladies out there, here’s a heads up on one of the major cosmetics brands out there - Maybelline. 

Maybelline

Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Database has thus far evaluated a whopping 441 products of Maybelline, of which its safety ratings range from a reassuring score of one to a highly disconcerting eight.  What does this mean as it applies to the brand as a whole?  The good news is that there are in fact products that have been deemed safe, as is the case with their Fit Me! Pressed Powders, Define-A-Line Eyeliner, and Pure Concealers.   Everything else, on the other hand, not so much.  Of the 441 products reviewed, only 19 of them fall within the safe range of 0-2.  In other words, you run the risk of exposing your body to a number of ingredients that have the data and statistics to back up their toxicity. 

For instance, consider Maybelline’s Dream Mousse Foundation, furnished an intermediate rating of five.  Its chock full of parabens (five to be exact), synthetic preservatives that have no purpose outside of ensuring your makeup can sit of a shelf for months, even years at a time without compromising the integrity of the formula.  These additives have been shown to mimic hormones our bodies naturally produce and thereby disrupt key organ functions.  In fact, they’ve even come under fire for causing breast cancer in women – parabens often mimic the female hormone estrogen, of which heightened levels can result in breast cancer.  And that’s just one of the multiple ingredients included suspected of detrimental health effects.     

Coming Soon: CoverGirl’s safety evaluation . . .

The Cosmetic Conundrum

A dab of blush here, a touch of mascara there.  For most women, dabbling in cosmetics is commonplace.  And why shouldn’t it be, what with luxurious-looking skincare and make-up brands plastering the pages of nearly every magazine?  Cosmetic enhancement offers the hope that all women alike can look and feel beautiful, sheathed behind an armor of head-turning lipstick and that perfect smoky eye.  Yet for all cosmetic brands offer in the ways of bolstering physical appearance, they harbor a fatal flaw: the lack any kind of substantial regulation. 

Many forget that our skin is our body’s largest organ; it serves as a protective barrier to the outside world and a gateway in which foreign substances are processed.  You’d think given that fact that the Food and Drug Administration would take steps to ensure that cosmetics and skin care are properly manufactured with safe, wholesome ingredients.  Wrong.  According to the FDA, cosmetic products and ingredients are not subject to any kind of premarket approval, with the exception of color additives, which have been shown to exhibit some nasty side-effects.  Aside from that, cosmetic companies are given free reign as to what they’re allowed to produce, and in many cases, that includes a number of potentially harmful ingredients. 

Learning to Translate

For those who have yet to devote a lot of time towards researching what’s commonly included in processed foods, here’s a quick list of food additives you should try to avoid, taken directly from http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm.  It’s a wonderful source in deciphering ingredients whose names are of particular peculiarity.  

Navigating Labels

For most of us, taking the time to prepare pure, wholesome foods during the hustle and bustle of everyday life is a rare thing indeed.  Between the demands of full-time employment, maintaining a household, and in many cases, raising children, reserving an hour towards making dinner is the last thing anyone wants to do.  Consumers thus place their faith in ready-made meals and boxed dinners with the seductive assertion: “Ready in just 10 minutes!” inscribed in bold print.  However, much like you wouldn’t select a bruised-looking apple based on what information you glean from its skin, you shouldn’t disregard the readily available information printed on the back of your packaged foods. 

Convenience shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor in what foods to select when browsing through grocery store aisles.  In fact, it shouldn’t even be a priority.  Ignore food labels and you could be committing yourself to a bad apple.  

Shop Smart

It should come as no surprise that the United States is the world’s leading nation for obesity – we don’t know how to pick the foods we eat!  The food industry has capitalized on convenience over nutrition, and now more than ever, families have taken to choosing the convenience of pre-made, processed foods over the traditional home-made meal.  Consumers have fallen prey to the lure of decadent-looking images and ten-minute prep times emblazoned on box dinners, so much so that the actual content of their mealtime choices is completely disregarded.  To be expected, this has resulted in a significant decline in overall health.   

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way.  A conscious effort to make educated and healthful choices when perusing the aisles of your local supermarket offers a simple, straightforward remedy.  Here are several tips to consider that should get you started:

Organic Mania - Is it worth the hype?

Since the advent of the green movement, no other topic has elicited quite such controversy and concern as the frenzy for organic food.  Long gone are the days when grocery shopping was a simple matter of grab-and-go.  Rather, today, a visit to your local grocery store presents the daunting dilemma of determining what foods are safe to eat and whether or not their higher price tag is worth the supposed benefits. 

Consumers are now bombarded with findings condemning conventional farming practices as unnatural, unnecessary and most of all, unsafe.  And like a villain that needs vanquishing, the public turned to organic food as their champion of wellness and defender of health.  Celebrated for being free of toxins commonly found in conventional farming aids, food that has been organically-produced offers the assurance that what you’re eating is delicious, nutritious and most importantly, safe.  Yet for all the outstanding claims of the organic movement, is it really worth the hype? 

Ned Jennings: From Farmhand to Businessman

NOTE: This particular post has little to do with clean-living aside from the fact that it deals with agriculture.

Clad in a crisp dress shirt, customary cup of hot coffee in hand, Ned Jennings fits the textbook description of an everyday businessman.  Lounging at a local Starbucks, he’s nearly identical in appearance to the smattering of local businessmen that frequent it: clean-cut, clothes perfectly pressed and the sense that this is a man who is confident in what he does.  Yet for all the stateliness he presents to the world, Jennings understands perfectly well what it means to get down and dirty – since the time he could work, Jennings was tasked with the responsibilities of maintaining a 60-acre farm. 

Be a Clean-Living Consumer

Between the endless bounty of commercials and the disarray of pretty packaging and cluttered grocery store shelves, it’s a miracle anyone manages to decide upon anything when taking a routine trip to the supermarket.  The ease in which companies can now promote their products has resulted in a ceaseless barrage of information that’s left the everyday consumer completely confounded.  With so much hearsay, how can anyone possibly make sense of it all?

Be a clean-living consumer.  It’s so tempting to trust the assertions of an advertisement, or fall prey to a particular product’s convincing claims of superiority, but before you jump the gun on that new-fangled dishwater detergent or sample a delicious-looking frozen dinner, do your research.  Just what are you exposing your body and your household to?  Knowledge is power - use it.  Make informed decisions so that you’re assured the peace of mind that the products you use and the products you consume are safe, healthful, and most of all, good for you. 

That’s where this blog comes in.  The Clean-Living Consumer sheds light on exactly what you need to know before taking that fateful step into your local grocery store.  What’s safe, what isn’t, organic vs. inorganic, and how to make sense of those pesky product labels will all be topics touched upon to aid in the selection of the best and safest products.  Ensure your own well-being and take charge of your grocery shopping experience.  Welcome to the Clean-Living Consumer.