Vegan Cosmetics can be natural or synthetic, how to differentiate it?

Vegan cosmetics are increasingly on the rise. This is due to increased consumer concern and easy access to information. There is an interest in using products that do not come from or derived from animals and that are healthy at the same time.

The large conventional laboratories are taking advantage of the growth that natural and vegan cosmetics are experiencing, and promote their brands with synthetic ingredients as vegan, even though they are not natural. So we must learn to choose quality cosmetics.

Cosmetics can be made with 3 large groups of ingredients:

• Ingredients of animal origin
• Ingredients of vegetable origin
• Synthetic ingredients, many of them derived from petroleum

Therefore, the types of vegan cosmetics that we can find on the market today, with:

• Synthetic vegan cosmetics: it is conventional cosmetics without ingredients or animal derivatives. It can be called vegan, but not all its ingredients are natural because, in addition to the vegetable raw materials, they contain synthetic ingredients.
• Natural vegan cosmetics: made only with vegetable raw materials, without synthetics, or animal ingredients or their derivatives. Here comes certified or non-certified cosmetics.

More and more studies show the benefits of natural ingredients, and how harmful many synthetic ingredients allowed in cosmetics can be.

To distinguish them, first of all, we must look for cosmetics certified as natural, that is, any of the official certifications that exist in the market. The main natural cosmetics certifiers are the Spanish BioVidaSana (Bio-Inspecta), the German BDIH, the French Ecocert or CosmeBio, the British Soil Association, the Italian ICEA, etc. But this is not enough, because in many cases they can contain ingredients derived from animals since they are also natural.

We must avoid: Coenzyme Q10, Hyaluronic Acid, and Collagen

In recent years, many ingredients of animal origin have become fashionable, and that both conventional and certified natural brands use in their formulation. Some of these ingredients that we must avoid if we want authentic vegan cosmetics are:

• Coenzyme Q10 also called ubiquinone: is an animal derivative since it is found in many cells, mainly in the mitochondria.
• Hyaluronic acid: it is a viscous liquid that exists in the synovium, vitreous humor, and collagen connective tissue of numerous organisms.
• Collagen: it is a protein that forms fibers that are found in all animals. They are secreted by connective tissue cells such as fibroblasts, as well as by other cell types.
• Wax, pollen, or honey: all of them beekeeping derivatives.

Therefore, secondly, we will have to make sure that the products, in addition to the natural cosmetics certificate, have some of the vegan symbols/seals that exist on the market, to ensure that they do not contain ingredients or animal derivatives.

Another important issue is to differentiate between natural vegan cosmetics and organic vegan cosmetics. The natural one usually uses refined oils that come from crops with pesticides, while the organic uses mainly organic first-extraction oils, grown without pesticides. But this is another topic that we will deal with in another edition.