Butters and Oils oh my!
What is the difference between our all-natural products and the products you can buy off a shelf? One very big one – we use the highest quality ingredients! We use all-natural butters and oils in our products that are compounded in high concentrations. We do not use fillers, loads of non-beneficial ingredients, and certainly not artificial preservatives.
So, what does that mean for you? When you buy our all-natural products versus a mass-produced product, our products will have fewer overall ingredients and in a much higher concentration per ingredient. For example, if you buy one of our products with the word Shea Butter in the title, that product will have at least 46% Shea butter in it.
By comparison, a shelf-based product that contains the word Shea could have trace amounts of Shea or none at all. Here is how it works. First of all, some products include the word Shea in the title, but it is the title of the product not necessarily what the ingredients are. How do you know? You look at the ingredients and each ingredient is listed in the order of what percentage is used. For example, let’s look at the ingredients on a bottle of lotion that you can buy on a shelf. There is a product I am going to use as an example called Luxe Shea Cream. First, let’s look at the title and what it implies. Luxe – means it is a luxury product or supposed to be. Shea implies that it is a Shea Butter product, but doesn’t say Shea Butter – just Shea. Hmmmm. Lastly cream means its job is to moisturize your skin.
Looking at the product’s ingredients, the top two ingredients are water and alcohol. Alcohol in a lotion? Why? Next in line is caprylic triglyceride. What is caprylic triglyceride? https://www.healthline.com/health/caprylic-capric-triglyceride. It is coconut oil and glycerin and has great benefits for binding the ingredients together acting as one of the many preservatives used in this cream? This alone is fine but why not just state it more simply? Also important to note, coconut is a lovely moisturizer, but it is comedogenic, meaning it can clog your pores. Not only that but lots of people have allergy to coconut so using it is a lotion just isn't the best idea.
Listed after caprylic triglyceride, is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis which is sweet almond oil. The sixth highest used ingredient is polysorbate 60. https://www.bibra-information.co.uk/downloads/toxicity-profile-for-polysorbate-60-1989/ https://thedermreview.com/polysorbate-60/
It is used to improve the texture and feel of products but, please read up on it because it really isn’t good for you and is even considered contaminated. (If this product actually contained high amounts of Shea Butter there wouldn’t be a need for a filler that “improves the texture.”)
Okay, so where is the Shea in the list of ingredients? It is right below the middle and towards the bottom of the list of ingredients. So it does contain Shea which is good, but why does the product title contain the word Shea if it isn’t a major ingredient? Well, you know why.
If you’re still reading, you're probably as curious as I am about this subject. So why do big manufacturers try to fool you into thinking that the product is luxury or a Shea butter product, but instead use cheap ingredients as their main ingredients? It is because they have to make major margins on each product and have shareholders, and bean-counters to keep happy. Essentially, they can’t afford to compound with high-quality ingredients. Also they have to load up their products with preservatives because of the manufacturing process. By the time a product reaches the shelf and eventually you, it would have rotted.
Now you must be thinking if big manufacturers can’t afford high quality and high quantity, how can Tremblay Handcrafted? It is because we are a boutique business with no investors or bean counters to please, and our concern is quality and not margins. Our products don't sit on the shelf, we make them in the same month that they are shipped. That is why we will always keep it small, boutique, all natural and handmade by us.
To learn more about our ingredients