Cheap - But It'll Cost You

VS.

When an Avon brochure appeared at my door seemingly out of nowhere, being the beauty hound that I am, I couldn't resist a sneaky peak; after all, with Reese Witherspoon on the cover there had to something worth looking at. For such a little brochure, it is positively bursting with products, and it's all a bit overwhelming at first glance. However, as you flick through you're slowly lured in with a few stand-out products that make seductive claims like 'look up to 5 years younger in just 14 days' and 'wake up to your dream hair'.

If you can resist such glorious claims, then perhaps the multitude of offers will sway you?

Any 2 for £2

Any 5 for £5

Buy any two for a tenner

Save over 20%

Save up to 50%

Buy a 99p 'Value!' item

Everything half price

Free gift with purchase

Buy 1 get 1 half price

Buy 1 get 1 free

Buy 1 choose 2 free

Buy 1 choose 1 for £1

Get all 5 for £10

...and so on. (Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap comes to mind!) In times where we're tightening our belts and spending less on luxuries I can see how some people will be drawn in by these too-good-to-be-true offers. However, are they really as good as they seem? Products like a 400 ml bottle of firming body lotion being sold for 99p while still making a profit has to be chock full of incredibly cheap ingredients (often petroleum based with cut-price preservatives) and manufactured at an astonishingly low price.

This inspired me to do a little research using one of my favourite consumer websites: www.goodguide.com. It's still in its early stages, but Good Guide already contains comprehensive ingredient and manufacturing information on a multitude of products, including many from Avon.

One product that caught my eye was Avon's Anew Ultimate Skin Transforming Cream – a Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) award winner, no less. However, GoodGuide rated this product as 'Terrible' for general health, scoring it zero out of ten. The rating is created by analysing...

'...the safety and toxicity of its ingredients, based on research by the Environmental Working Group. The EWG bases its score on data from more than 50 toxicity and regulatory databases and takes into account the product's potential cancer hazards, development and reproductive hazards, violations, restrictions, warnings, allergy and immunotoxicity concerns, and a range of other concerns such as neurotoxicity and hormone disruption. For sunscreens, this score also incorporates an assessment of how well the product works in blocking UVA and UVB rays.' (Good Guide, 2009)

I went directly to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and had a look at the ingredients list there (as Avon don't list ingredients on their site or in the brochures). There are seventy seven different ingredients in this one face cream. You can find out more information and the break-down of the ingredients list by following this link: www.cosmeticsdatabase.com. For comparison purposes, Neal's Yard Remedies produce a three times award-winning moisturiser: Frankincense Hydrating Cream, which has only 25 ingredients. That's only 32% of the number of ingredients in Avon's Anew Ultimate cream, and the former is 91% organic to boot.

Do I worry about cheap and potentially toxic ingredients in my cosmetics? Well, yes. Bearing in mind that the skin is our body's biggest organ it should come as no surprise that whatever we put on the outside gets into our blood stream and is absorbed by our body. Even in these credit crunch times I am willing (and actively encourage others) to shun the bargain basement or overly synthetic products on the market and spend a little extra on something of quality.

P.S.

Luckily I remembered to include a list of fabulous natural cosmetics companies in this blog. Have a look in the right hand column!

Reference

Good Guide (2009) Avon Anew Ultimate Skin Transforming Cream, Available from: http://www.goodguide.com/products/127970-avon-anew-ultimate-skin-transforming-cream/details#rating-627652