Don’t know what half of those ingredients are in your makeup? Don’t know what they are potentially doing to your body, or let alone how to pronounce them? Did you know that we are constantly exposing ourselves to hundreds of different chemicals everyday? For example, that skincare regimen may look harmless on the surface because you’re only using just a few products, but take a closer look at the ingredient list on each one of those products. Do you notice the slew of ingredients listed on the label? That’s right, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), we are potentially exposing ourselves to more than 120 chemicals each day! So, how do we navigate this complicated world of ingredients that we consume in our everyday products? Well… thanks to the EWG, there’s an app for that, and it definitely makes shopping for products that go in and on our bodies a whole lot easier!
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an advocacy group that is concerned about the ingredients we consume in our foods and skincare products. They thoroughly research products and advocate for safer ingredients in our everyday essentials. They want to make life easier for consumers, so the EWG created an app called “Healthy Living App,” to help you easily research ingredients in food and other products. By simply scanning a bar code, typing in the product name or the ingredients in question, it will give you an overall safety score, with 1 being the safest and 10 being the worst. It does not stop there, though! If you’ve searched by product name, and then click on the product, it gives a detailed breakdown of its ingredients and the safety score for each ingredient! This takes hours of research off your hands, so that you can continue shopping effortlessly for the safest products!
The EWG assigns their own stamp of approval on various products’ packaging! For a company’s product to be fully EWG verified, it needs to fulfill the following criteria: To be fully transparent with their ingredients (including what goes into “fragrance”), to ensure there is no use of “unacceptable” ingredients in their products, and that safe and environmentally sound manufacturing practices are used. So, if you can, seek out EWG verified products!
According to the information on the app, it has safety ratings for over 80,000 food and skin products; however, when I tried researching some of the items that I use, they did not appear (perhaps the brands I use are not as popular and have yet to be added to the EWG’s growing database!). Nevertheless, this app still covers a myriad of brands and products that are surely used by many!
I am in no way endorsed or sponsored by the EWG. I am just really keen on the ingredients going into the products that I consume on a regular basis. Also, I have to admit, plugging in various products in this app was really fun for me (totally nerding out!), just to see what kind of ratings certain items would receive!
Anywho, I personally think this is a handy app to have if you are trying to bring more awareness to the ingredients in products you consume on a regular basis. It’s definitely worth being conscious of what we are putting in and on our bodies.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out the EWG’s website: www.ewg.org.
That’s my healing hint of the day!