Not-So-Honest Company?

Jessica Alba's The Honest Company is being sued for falsely labeling products "natural" when they're not. I'm not sure how successful this will be, since my understanding is that there's no regulation of the term "natural" - because how would you define that, when it comes to cosmetics? The fact that it's such an empty, slippery term is why it's so annoying (and so useful to advertisers). Is a surfactant derived from coconut oil (cocamidopropyl betaine, once of the ingredients targeted in the lawsuit) natural or not? Coconuts are natural, but the ingredients extracted from them might have been made in a lab (gasp!). And so forth.

This particular lawsuit, which you can read about here, is claiming that the company uses synthetic preservatives (well, good) and surfactants, and that their sunscreen is ineffective (more here).

What do you think? On the one hand, I am irritated by all this natural=better marketing, but on the other hand, stuff should have fucking preservatives in it, so let's not sue companies for being responsible and safe.

If you want "natural" sunscreen, you might have to compromise

I don't totally understand why people want everything to be "natural," other than because it sounds vaguely better than "unnatural," if you don't think about it too much. But some people do, so fine. If that's your thing, you should still wear sunscreen - and you're in luck because zinc oxide is pretty natural (though there is nothing wrong with chemical sunscreens - here's one I like). The downside is that zinc oxide tends to be quite opaque, so it can leave a white cast on the skin. Some formulas add tints or other active sunscreen ingredients to mitigate that whiteness, but then maybe it's not so natural anymore.

Other companies, like Jessica Alba's The Honest Company apparently just decreased the amount of zinc oxide in their "ultra-pure" natural sunscreen from 20% to 9.3%, because people didn't like the texture and appearance, while keeping the SPF 30 label on the bottle. Most other zinc sunscreens contain 18-25%. Keep in mind that the FDA has rules about SPF, but it relies on companies themselves to test their own products. The Honest Company says that they added "other ingredients" - unspecified - to compensate. But those other ingredient are not sunscreens, so they're not going to maintain the SPF. That's nonsense. And judging from consumer complaints, that solution did not work, because people have been getting literally burned by this shit.

So if you want all natural zinc-based sunscreen, you're going to have to compromise: either it's going to be less esthetically pleasing or less effective. Of course there are lots of great zinc sunscreens out there that work well, but they tend to have scary added "chemicals" (OH NOES) in them.

(Note: The Honest Company's sunscreen is marked Out of Stock on their website, so hopefully that means they have pulled it from their online store to reformulate.)