There is no legal definition of "natural," for beauty/cosmetic products. Legally, if a product contains only one ingredient that is natural, even if it is a micro drop of water or aloe, it can be called "natural."

"Organic" is even trickier. If a product says it has, for example, "organic coconut oil, if it does not have an asterik next to the ingredient, a USDA organic seal or the logo of a State certifying agency, the ingredient is hard to trace. It is hard to verify the ingredient.

There are a whole list of ways that the loop holes for "natural," or "organic," can be used when the product could have chemicals or preservatives.

Just a note for those of you who try to use Natural cosmetics or creams on your face or body. It may pay to do the research if it is important to you.

sometimes the most innocent product, like Nivea from Europe is the purer product than the one that is higher priced, (or lower,) and it may do less harm to use the name brands.

One also does not know what these untried "organic," ingredients can do to your skin. Just because it is Organic does not mean it works.

I grew up with Aloe plants. I tried the straight aloe from the plant on burns, my skin and such with no relief and, in fact, worse results than with name brand products.

Aloe has it's place, but it you grow the plant, break off it's leaves and look at straight aloe, even apply it, you will get sticky feeling, tightly drying and "not of much use," results.

Dancer

For small paper cuts and scrapes on my hand and legs, I did find it useful to put sticky aloe juice directly on a cleaned area of the scratch, from the plant, then protect area with a bandaid. It healed much more nicely with less scarring. Works for me..when I have an aloe plant around.

dancer, what do you know about the brand Origins?

If anyone is interested, the Environmental Working Group web site has a section on cosmetics. You can look up many brands to see what the ingredients are and then see what the ingredients can do to you. I believe they also list products that are benign in that they don't contain the 'bad' chemicals. I don't have the url here at work, but you should be able to just search on either EWG or the full name.

I've put this on here before because I believe it is so important for us to see what goes in to so many cosmetics we use. Good for you Yonuh for bringing it back up. Here's the link:

Environmental Working Group

Just click on Cosmetics