The Green Beauty Guide

After 2 days of using skincare products by Nutriganics (The Body Shop) I am utterly disappointed.

Let’s begin with the better products. The mask is OK. For the clay mask, it dries to invisibility which is weird. Normally, clay masks dry to bright white/gray/yellow/pink. This mask dried and became invisible. Lookes unusual, weird, but all right - for someone who was raised on Queen Helen Mint Julep, I am not really picky. Nutriganic clay mask left my skin clean-pored (what else did you expect from kaolin?) and perhaps nothing else. If I had a coupon to buy just one product from the Nutriganics range by The Body Shop, this would be the mask. Harmless. Basic. Nice to have round the house.

The rest of the products are less than great. The day moisturizer is particularly bad. When I applied it, the liquid smelled like a Coppertone sunscreen. Hardly natural! And of course not organic. As I mentioned in a previous post, artificial fragrance was added to the “organic” brew, and no one at The Body Shop ever bothered to make it smell nearly natural.

Now, the petrochemicals. The silicones in the formulation made my face feel miserable. The “anti-aging” day moisturizer (where’s SPF, mind me asking?) made my skin feel tight, dry, and itchy. I walked around the house with the product for 10 minutes, then stopped procrastinating, and rinsed it off.

This is the first time in many years of cosmetic testing I am forced to rinse something off my skin. As I said in my book, my skin is as tolerant as celebrity UN ambassador. It can face anything for the sake of publicity. Not this time. This moistirizer is the opposite of skincare. It’s Clearasil with an organic name on it.

I was really willing to let it go. But today, my readers stepped in:

I just came across your October 10th blog post about the Nutriganics line from The Body Shop. As a person with sensitive skin, I would like to confirm that there is something in this line that causes irritation. I tried it out and ended up with a rash on my face, as well as very red skin. I generally use the Aloe line from The Body Shop (which works wonderfully with my skin), but with the way Nutriganics was advertised, I thought that something “organic” would not irritate my skin like this. And I was looking for something anti-aging that wouldn’t irritate my skin (and my search obviously still continues). Please feel free to let your readers know!

 So, it’s not really just me being super-attentive to the ingredients. Nutriganics by The Body Shop may sound like a good step in the right direction, but it seems to be not a really well thought-through move, with all the petrochemicals and artificial fragrance in its formulae. Organic customers today are so well-versed, they can spot a gimmick, a greenwashing product miles ahead.

Supporting fair trade is good, but how about being true to the words “organic” and “healthy”?