Before I get into it, I'm just going to throw it out there... if you find yourself wanting to know more about what should or shouldn't be in skincare, you could check out the ETHYST® Standard. Ok, with that, here we go friends...
Somewhere along the way, the internet decided that one of the easiest ways to determine whether an ingredient is “clean” or “safe” was to look at the label and ask:
Can I pronounce this?
And if not, well… you must swiftly and without mercy sentence the offending item to death by trash can.
Gosh, it sounds wonderfully simple, doesn’t it? But guess what, friends? If you can pronounce it or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether an ingredient is safe, irritating, beneficial, natural, synthetic, or appropriate for your skin.
In fact, “if you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it” is some of the worst skincare advice on the internet.
Because the ingredient list on your skincare isn't written in everyday English. At least it shouldn’t be because legally ingredients lists are supposed to be written using the INCI.
And once you understand what that means, those intimidating-looking ingredient lists start making a whole lot more sense.
INCI stands for International Nomenclature Cosmetic Ingredients.
Essentially, it's exactly what it sounds like… a universally standardized naming system for cosmetic ingredients.
Rather than allowing every company to call the same ingredient whatever sounds nicest on the front of the bottle, INCI gives ingredients standardized names to be listed on cosmetic labels to ensure clarity across the board.
I mean, imagine trying to evaluate a product if one company listed an ingredient as “coconut oil,” another called it “tropical coconut extract,” another used “pure coconut nourishment,” and another invented some proprietary marketing name like Cocunutio™ for exactly the same thing.
That would be a nightmare, so instead the INCI nomenclature guarantees (as long as people are following the rules) that you see something like Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, which understandably looks considerably more “chemical” than coconut oil, and yet it’s still just good ole’ coconut oil.
So I’m sure you are starting to see that this is where that strange pronunciation rule begins to fall apart.
So, if you stop here and take nothing else from this article, you can at the very least walk away knowing that just because something sounds chemical to you really means nothing.
And it’s definitely not a safety assessment.
Plenty of perfectly ordinary ingredients look unfamiliar and even scary when they're written according to INCI conventions. For example:
Butyrospermum Parkii Butter (shea butter), Simmondsia Chinensis Seed Oil (jojoba oil), Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil (good ole’ sunflower oil), Tocopherol (yeah, that’s just vitamin E). Ascorbic Acid, Sodium Ascorbyl Phosphate, or Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate? All forms of one of our favorites… Vitamin C.
Were you able to pronounce all of those with ease? I’m going to say, probably not.
Again, “I recognize and can pronounce all of the ingredients” is a pretty terrible standard for evaluating a formula.
Your ability to pronounce Butyrospermum Parkii may be a challenge you didn’t know you’d ever need to face, but it doesn’t scream shea butter and it doesn’t help you understand whether shea butter belongs on your face.
Even more importantly, the idea of staying away from anything chemical-sounding is part of a larger problem in skincare: the misconception that skincare needs to be “chemical free” or it’s dangerous.
Y’all, everything around us is composed of chemicals. Water is a chemical substance. The compounds responsible for the smell of an actual rose… like a live rose… those are chemicals. The caffeine in your coffee is a chemical… and a much needed one at that. So are the fatty acids naturally present in your skin.
So when you think in terms of skincare needing to contain no chemicals coupled with a list of short familiar words only, you’re going to naturally become extremely confused because skincare is cosmetic chemistry and chemistry doesn’t work that way.
Nature certainly doesn't cooperate with this rule either, so I’m not really sure how skincare is supposed to uphold these obviously extremely-well versed internet influencer “standards.”
As you can clearly see now, an ingredient can be naturally derived and have an intimidating INCI name while a plant extract can come across as easy to read, but be known to cause irritation or sensitization, so substituting familiarity for safety makes absolutely zero scientific sense and at ETHYST®, we like things to make sense from a science perspective.
Evaluating skincare requires considerably more context than just counting syllables.
And ironically, the very thing people are taught to fear (pronunciation) is what makes ingredient transparency possible because the INCI was put in place in order to help protect consumers.
Through standardized ingredient naming consumers, formulators, dermatologists, estheticians, researchers, regulators, and toxicologists are able to have a much clearer understanding of what’s actually in a product.
This is so valuable because marketing language isn't science-based ingredient language. Sure, things like “botanical hydration complex”, “advanced age-defying technology" or “natural moisture infusion” sound absolutely lovely, impressive… even reassuring. But what does any of that actually mean?
Well, because of the INCI, you can just turn the bottle around to find out because the ingredient declaration is where the product has to stop speaking in marketing buzzwords and start telling you what you're actually dealing with. So this is why learning to read an INCI list is far more useful than learning to fear one.
And I get it, knowing how to read the list, doesn’t necessarily clarify what you should be looking for, but at least it’s a start. Being able to understand what the ingredients actually are allows you to start asking better questions like:
What is the ingredient? Why’s it in the formula? What function does it perform? Is there good evidence supporting its use? Is it being used at an appropriate concentration? Is it known to cause irritation, sensitization, environmental, endocrine, or other safety concerns? How does it behave within the finished formulation? (just as an aside: Ingredients can be safe in isolation, which is how they’re typically tested, but how do they operate within a formulation with other ingredients?)
In order to find the answers to those questions, it might require a little more work, but fortunately, we live in an age where information is easily accessible and you can easily access trusted information and sources like our Skin Science blog (hopefully you have it bookmarked!).
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, there’s a difference between a single ingredient and a formula.
While an ingredient list can tell you a tremendous amount about what’s in a product, it cannot tell you everything about the finished formula.
Cosmetic formulation involves concentrations, pH, preservation systems, ingredient interactions, stability, delivery, packaging, manufacturing practices, and more. Additionally, all ingredients can behave differently depending on their concentration, formulation, delivery system, combination with other ingredients, and how it's being used.
So that’s why two products can contain similar ingredients, but perform completely differently.
Likewise, the presence of an ingredient doesn't automatically tell you whether there's enough of it to produce a particular benefit (i.e. anti-aging).
Cosmetic formulation is a little more complex than it may seem on the surface, which is why we believe that consumers deserve better transparency about what’s being put into the products they use every day and are working as a brand to encourage other brands to create truly clean products and transparent education.
Genuine transparency isn't accomplished by teaching people that unfamiliar words are dangerous. It's accomplished through integrity and science-based formulation that’s truly safe for skin, which is why we’re so up front about our ingredients lists and work hard to share digestible skincare education with you. You never have to go searching for what’s in our product. We don’t hide it in a drop down menu half-way through another section of key ingredients that we want you to see. We put it right there, out in the open for you to read in full directly in the product description.
We believe in truly clean skincare.
And since we created a proprietary framework eliminating over 3200 ingredients commonly found in conventional and “clean” beauty to ensure a top tier, actually clean product, we have nothing to hide.
So the next time someone tells you:
“If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't put it on your skin.”
Just remember, you probably couldn't pronounce Butyrospermum Parkii when you first saw it, but you’ve since learned it’s just shea butter and the INCI is nothing to be afraid of.
