If you’ve stayed informed over the past few months, you’ve noticed that we’re making a few changes around Alabu. We have a new logo, and are currently rolling out new packaging. If you’ve received anything in the new packaging, you’ll notice that the ingredients listing looks a little different than it used to. First, I’d like to say that our product ingredients have NOT changed in ANY WAY whatsoever. What has changed is what we call them.
Let me explain:
Our products are considered cosmetics by the FDA. Although we mostly sell soap (which is exempt from most cosmetic regulation), because we advertise that our soap moisturizes, it’s considered a cosmetic. The FDA has some pretty specific rules about how to label cosmetics. One of these rules relates to how ingredients are named. In a nutshell: the FDA defines what ingredient names are acceptable, and we have to use those names on our product packaging. This is good for consistency’s sake, but it also makes some of the ingredients look a little more menacing.
For example, the FDA-approved term for “Olive Oil” is “OLEA EUROPAEA OIL”, for a really crazy one, try “Shea Butter” whose FDA-approved term is “BUTYROSPERMUM PARKII”. We did try our best to preserve the common names in our listing though. Instead of listing “RICINUS COMMUNIS SEED OIL” we list it as “RICINIS COMMUNIS (CASTOR) SEED OIL”, (hopefully you can figure out that’s just “Castor Oil”) which is as good as we could do without breaking the FDA rules.
We realize that this makes it a little harder to read the ingredients, and it’s important to us that our customers know all of the ingredients that go into our products, but then again we don’t want to be breaking the rules, either. We think we’ve done a good job making it as easy as possible while still being within the rules.
H.M.