Gimme the Good Stuff

By Maia James, with research and recommendations by Michael Hopkins, Phd

You probably remember Dr. Hopkins from his invaluable research on our Disposable Diaper Guide and Prenatal Vitamin Guide. As a scientist, Dr. Hopkins is able to read peer-reviewed studies and make sense of the potential risks of hundreds of ingredients (including how these ingredients interact with each other) that you’ll find even in natural face creams. With his help, I’ve written what I think is one of our most comprehensive products guides yet, so let’s get to it!

My Top Pick for Basic Natural Face Cream

Acure Organics Brightening Day Cream is my pick for an affordable natural face cream for everyday use with absolutely no concerning ingredients.

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How We Came Up With Our List of Natural Face Creams

When we began researching this guide, we were immediately overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products, even within the “natural” face cream space. [expander_maker id=”3″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]

To cull the list down, we eliminated any product that does not specify that it is for the face and for daytime, as well as any product with an SPF designation. We also weeded out products that were more of an serum or balm and wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate for daily use on normal skin. (Night creams, anti-aging creams, and facial sunscreens will be covered in future guides.)

As always, we used EWG for lots of our ingredients research. There are some inconsistencies on the EWG website–one face cream has grapefruit extract listed as a 2 (out of a hazard scale of 10) and another product has the same extract listed as a 1. Other ingredients, like dimethicone and sodium hydroxide, have even greater ranges (from 1 to 4).

After deciding on the appropriate criteria for what would make brands Best, Good, Bad, or Okay Stuff (more on this in a minute), Dr. Hopkins made a spreadsheet some 25 columns long, and populated it with the list of all the natural face cream brands that you guys asked us to review and that we’d found on our own (this ended up being a staggering 175 brands of face cream!).

For each brand, Dr. Hopkins evaluated every ingredient for its safety and environmental impact and calculated affordability. I then plunked all the reviewed brands into a Best, Good, Okay, Bad or Sneaky Stuff category, which you can review at the bottom of this post.

A Note About “Natural” Face Cream

With face cream as well as other products, we prefer to find what we consider “clean,” rather than just “natural.” Sometimes ingredients from nature are very problematic–because of unsustainable sourcing or other environmental concerns (e.g. the environmental cost of palm oil, the mica mines in India) or even health concerns (Japanese honeysuckle, for instance, is a natural preservative whose structure looks like a paraben). On the other hand, sometimes (albeit rarely) synthetic ingredients can actually be safer/more sustainable alternatives.

What Makes a Face Cream the Best Stuff?

In order to be included in the “​Best Stuff​” category, we decided that a face cream needed to be free of the following 18 compounds:

1. Benzyl alcohol. A preservative with carcinogenic and neurotoxic properties.
2. BHT. Another preservative with a MSDS that mentions toxicity to the liver, blood, and central nervous system.
3. Dimethicone. Safe from a toxicity standpoint, but these linear silicones do not biodegrade and are bad for the environment.
4. Disodium EDTA. A chelating agent used in a variety of applications in both food and skincare products. It’s usually included as a preservative/stabilizing agent, but it also helps with rinse-off products for anyone with “hard water” because the EDTA binds with heavy metals, thereby preventing them from forming a residue on the skin. At the quantities used as a food additive and in personal care products, disodium EDTA is non-toxic. The choice to use products containing EDTA is more an environmental concern than it is a personal safety concern.
5. Ethanol. Otherwise known as alcohol, ethanol is used as a solvent in various cosmetics. Among irritation concerns, ethanol is shown to enhance the penetration of other chemicals.
6. Fragrance. Generally, phthalates are added to fragrance to help the scent last longer, and companies are NOT required to disclose the presence of phthalates. Some products do list “fragrance*” with an asterisk on their label, and then  explain that the fragrance contains no synthetic ingredients. For transparency purposes, any brand that maintains a proprietary blend or secret recipe will not qualify as Best Stuff. Some brands also specify that they use  isolated compounds derived from natural essential oils, but that are not the complete, naturally occurring substance. These products can be Good Stuff or Okay Stuff.
7. Myristyl myristate. This naturally occurring ester is found in many types of oils and fats and serves as natural emollient, texture enhancer, or emulsifier in a range of skincare products. Although there are no toxicity risks with myristyl myristate, this ingredient can be an irritant when used topically. For that reason only, products that contain it will not be included under Best Stuff.
8. Parabens. These preservatives are notorious endocrine disruptors that mimic estrogen in the body.
9. PEG chemicals. These petroleum-based chemicals are are used in cosmetics as stabilizers and to aid the penetration of other active ingredients. The PEG number indicates the number of units of ethylene glycol, and the lower the number the more absorbent it is. One example you’ll see on many face cream labels polyethylene glycol.
10. Petrolatum is a petrochemical derived from crude oil (also known as “petroleum jelly” which is used as a lubricant). It can be contaminated with ​polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are carcinogenic. Even without carcinogenic contamination, it can be a skin irritant and is not environmentally friendly–so you’ll never find it in Best Stuff or Good Stuff or even Okay Stuff.
11. Phenoxyethanol is an ingredient that we’ve debated fiercely here at the Gimme headquarters! When it comes to face cream, we’ve decided that no Best Stuff cream can contain phenoxyethanol. Still, we feel that phenoxyethanol is basically Okay Stuff when used in the concentrations found in cosmetics. It’s unlikely to be wdangerous, but hopefully cleaner preservatives are formulated in the near future.
12. Phthalates. We have a zero-tolerance policy with these super toxic endocrine disruptors (which you often won’t see listed on a label because they can hide out in “proprietary” fragrance blends). Nothing that we call Best, Good, or Okay Stuff will ever contain phthalates.
13. Polysorbate 20 is derived from sorbitol, which is a harmless natural sugar alcohol that’s been ethoxylated (combined with 20 parts of ethylene oxide). Unfortunately, during this process it can become contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which is a toxic carcinogen. Although polysorbate 20 is not toxic, the risk of contamination precludes this ingredient from being present in Best Stuff or Good Stuff. However, this alone would not prevent an otherwise clean, natural face cream from being Okay Stuff. (See polysorbate 60 as well.)
14. Potassium sorbate is an odorless and tasteless salt that’s synthetically produced by combining sorbic acid with potassium hydroxide. It is very commonly used as a preservative and has been ruled as generally safe to eat by the FDA and European Food Safety Authority when present in small quantities. When applied topically (in skin cream for example), potassium sorbate can cause irritation or an allergic reaction. This ingredient would not be found in a Best Stuff pick but if this is the biggest offender on a label, the product can still be Good Stuff.
15. Retinyl palmitate. This is problematic when used topically on the skin due to potentially carcinogenic properties when exposed to sunlight. If you want to play it safe, it’s better to avoid this for face cream that you’ll be applying daily in the morning. Thus, we didn’t include any products with retinyl palmitate in the category of Best or Good Stuff for this daily face cream guide.
16. Sodium benzoate. This food-grade preservative, when combined with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and potassium benzoate (another preservative), can create benzene, a well-known carcinogen. Research remains inconclusive and long-term studies are needed. You won’t find sodium benzoate in any of the Best Stuff natural face creams, but if there are not other offending ingredients, products with sodium benzoate may be included in the Good Stuff.
17. Sodium hydroxide. The EWG cites studies that show moderate evidence of metabolic effects even at very low doses and score this a 3 out of 10 in the hazard scale. Best Stuff won’t contain sodium hydroxide, but Good or Okay Stuff might.
18. Terpene alcohols. This list includes geraniol, ​linalool, nerol, camphor, citronellol, citral, limonene, eucalyptol, menthol and several others. These compounds occur​ naturally in the essential oils of many aromatic plants, and are often used for their fragrance. They have been shown to be anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, and also have demonstrated anti-cancer activity against various cancer cell lines in vitro. On the other hand, terpene alcohols can produce skin irritation/allergic reaction/sensitization after prolonged industrial exposure. These compounds are deemed safe for human use, but if you have a particular reason to be concerned (such as a known allergy or very sensitive skin) there is enough Good Stuff on the market that you should have no trouble locating a product without these terpenes. For this reason, nothing in the Best Stuff category contains them, although I am not personally worried about them.
19. Tocopherol (vitamin E) is safe, but we are dinging products that contain tocopheryl acetate​, which is the synthetic version, because of increased reported toxicity, risk of irritation, and contamination concerns (with toxic hydroquinone). Nothing in the Best Stuff or Good Stuff categories will contain tocopheryl acetate.

Surprisingly Not Sneaky Stuff

Many ingredients in skincare products might sound like synthetic compounds designed in a lab but they are actually just the latin or scientific names for naturally occurring/organic products, often extracted from plants. The following is a list of ingredients that are perfectly safe:

• Tocopherol just means vitamin E.
• Butyrospermum parkii is shea butter.
• Nyacinamide is vitamin B3.
• Guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride is just a derivative of guar gum from cluster beans and is a commonly used conditioning agent that is natural and safe.

In addition, to be considered the Best Stuff, a face cream must be:

• Organic (either entirely or mostly).
• Vegan. I don’t eat a vegan diet, but it’s impossible to not recognize that veganism is better for the planet. When it comes to face cream, there are so many options available, that there is room to make a distinction on these ecological grounds.

(By the way, I don’t think there is any reason to worry about face cream being gluten-free, although several of these brands also check that box.)

Problematic Ingredient Combinations

There are a handful of ingredients that are basically safe on their own, but a problematic when mixed with other ingredients. For instance:

• Potassium sorbate + ascorbic acid + ferric salts can potenially mutate cell DNA. ​
• Sodium benzoate + ascorbic acid​ 
can form carcinogenic benzene. We consider this low risk because the pH in cosmetic products are usually in the range where benzene will not form. Still, if you’re worried, make sure to choose something we call Best Stuff, since thouse brands won’t contain sodium benzoate.

What’s the Difference Between Best Stuff & Good Stuff?

When it comes to the ​Good Stuff​ category, there are several natural, clean face creams whose only crime is not being organic, or containing beeswax or terpenes from essential oils (which may be irritating for those with very sensitive skin), or perhaps they contain a bit of ethanol or potassium sorbate (also possible irritants).

Most of the 19 ingredients listed above will not be found in the Good Stuff, but there are a few exceptions worth mentioning:

1. Propriety fragrance. Any brand that maintains a proprietary blend or secret recipe will not qualify as Best Stuff, but–as long as the blend is natural and phthalate-free–it might still be Good Stuff.
2. Low-risk preservatives (phenoxyethanol, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate). These synthetic preservative may be found in Good Stuff–if there are no other offending ingredients in the product in question.

Dr. Hopkins and I agree that we are comfortable using anything that you’ll find listed below under Good Stuff in our own homes. What’s Allowed in the Okay Stuff?

The long list of products that we deemed Okay Stuff are mostly there because they contain phenoxyethanol or sodium benzoate. A few of them have neither but some other combination of not-so-good-stuff to keep them from receiving the Good Stuff stamp, such as:

1. Dimethicone, which is more of an environmental concern than a toxicity concern.
2. EDTA precludes inclusion in our Best Stuff or Good Stuff categories, but may be found in the Okay Stuff.
3. Polysorbate 20 is not toxic, but the risk of contamination precludes this ingredient from being present in Best Stuff or Good Stuff.

I am comfortable using the Okay Stuff if I don’t have access to Good or Best Stuff face creams.

Best Face Oils

We will do a serum/oil guide separately, but Dr. Hopkins did identify some face oils in his research that will definitely make our Best Stuff category, including:

Acure Organics Pure Argan Oil

Badger Face Oils (they make several—all are safe)

Drunk Elephant Virgin Marula Luxury Facial Oil

Ora’s Amazing Lightweight Daily Nourish Face Oil

Soapwalla Restorative Facial Serum (personal favorite)

The Best Stuff

The Good Stuff

The Okay Stuff

The Bad Stuff

The Sneaky Stuff

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