Can those "food grade" skin care products really be eaten? I'm sorry, you're getting stuck again!
Guide to Beauty Avoidance
The editor has it for everyone. People's pursuit of their own beauty has spawned a hot beauty market. A wide range of beauty products and endless skin care concepts are dazzling. The Science and Technology Daily has launched the "Beauty Makeup Avoidance Guide" column, which is not boastful, scientifically analyzes the concept of beauty make-up, pierces marketing gimmicks, and helps you bypass "the pits on your face".
"Kitchen food grade" "Foods that are good for the body are also good for the skin" "You can add our universal oil to your breakfast smoothie" "100% natural and non-synthetic moisturizer"...About skin care There are always new concepts emerging. Nowadays, "edible" has become the most popular concept. Compared with other cosmetics, "edible" skin care products advertise the naturalness and safety of product ingredients, emphasizing that their ingredients even reach the edible level. In these "eatable" skin care products, in addition to the main products launched by various brands, there are many netizens' DIY "experiences", kiwi yogurt mask, tomato acne mask, fruit vinegar and green beans tighten pore water... then these Are “eatable” skincare products really better?
"Edible" grade cosmetics must not be eaten
"Cosmetics and food belong to different industries. The two use different parts, absorb different ingredients, use raw materials and product index requirements, prohibition and restriction requirements, and implement different specifications and inspection standards." Tianjin Qiangweite Biological Technology Co., Ltd. Director Wang Peipei, Master of Biochemistry in Tianjin University, introduced that the cosmetic raw materials refer to the "Catalogue of Used Cosmetic Raw Material Names" issued by the state, a total of 8783 kinds, and the food additives refer to the "National Food Safety Standard Food Additive Use Standards", a total of 2370 kinds.
Wang Peipei introduced that taking alcohol as an example, the implementation standard for edible alcohol is GB10343-2008, and the methanol index of ordinary grade alcohol is "≤150 mg/L", which allows a small amount of methanol to exist; and in the "Cosmetics Safety Technical Specifications (2015)" Among them, methanol is a prohibited component. Another example is the requirements for microorganisms. Food is tested in accordance with the national standard for food microbiology GB4789, etc., and 42 items need to be tested. Cosmetics follow the requirements of the "Cosmetics Hygiene Code" to detect the total number of bacterial microorganisms, such as fecal coliform, Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Staphylococcus aureus, etc., the requirements of the two are completely different, and it is not safer to use food-grade products in skin care.
"The newly introduced concept of'edible' cosmetics by merchants is actually a market language used to promote the effect." Niu Dongbin, director of the Cosmetics Supervision Department of Tianjin Drug Administration, said that from the existing standards and specifications , Cosmetics are not edible, and the concept of "edible" cosmetics does not exist.
Direct application of food active ingredients is difficult to absorb
"Some ingredients in many foods can indeed play a role in skin care." Wang Hao, associate professor of the School of Food Engineering and Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, said, for example, polysaccharide oats have good moisturizing effects, and green tea containing tea polyphenols The ginsenosides in ginseng and ginseng have good antioxidant effects, and the agave containing steroidal saponins and other substances have good anti-inflammatory and moisturizing effects.
"But it should be noted that you should never mix food ingredients directly with other cosmetics." Niu Dongbin reminded that because cosmetics contain preservative ingredients, the addition of food ingredients will destroy the preservative system in cosmetics, which can lead to product occurrence. Deterioration, mold, oil moisture layer and other phenomena.
"Actually applying food ingredients directly, it is difficult for the skin to absorb. Many of the ingredients in food are large molecules. There is a very reliable basement membrane between the epidermis and dermis of the skin, which separates the epidermis and dermis into two worlds. It is difficult to achieve transdermal absorption, so it is difficult for substances with skin care effects to reach the dermis in large quantities; in addition, some ingredients are not very stable in the air, and the direct application effect will be greatly reduced; at the same time, there will be irritation caused by microorganisms exceeding the standard, etc. Factors exist." Wang Hao said, for example, the unstable nature of vitamin C is easy to oxidize, so the regular cosmetics generally use derivatives of vitamin C in a stable form, and the concentration and irritation are adjusted. Applying vitamin capsules directly or squeezing lemon juice directly into the mask will not only have no skin-care effect, but citric acid is highly corrosive, prone to dry face, redness and other symptoms, and can cause skin allergies in severe cases.
"But if you apply cosmetics containing extracts of these ingredients, the skin care effect is definitely better than the edible effect." Wang Hao explained that although the skin care mechanism of eating and applying is the same, all the food you eat must pass through the digestive tract. The chemical digestion of various digestive enzymes, and also need to pass through the metabolism of other organs, and ultimately the active ingredients that can act on the skin are relatively small. Only by eating a certain amount of food ingredients can you achieve the same effect as smear, but this often produces some side effects. If you eat vitamin C to whiten, if you eat too much, it is easy to cause diarrhea, acid reflux and so on.
"The food ingredients added in regular cosmetics are not directly added, but are added in the form of extracts." Wang Peipei introduced that the extracts go through physical and chemical extraction and separation processes to obtain and concentrate one of the animals and plants. A variety of effective ingredients without changing the structure of the effective ingredients. Depending on the composition of the extract, glycosides, acids, polyphenols, polysaccharides, terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloids, etc. can be formed. Moreover, some of the natural food ingredients are not suitable for the skin. Direct use will damage the skin, so according to different uses, we use different purification techniques to obtain extracts with different functions.
Wang Peipei said that compared with food, the raw materials used in chemicals sometimes have higher purity requirements, because too many impurities will lead to the collapse of the cosmetic formula system, and cosmetic formulas are complex, a formula may have up to dozens of ingredients, which It is required that the active substance of each ingredient has higher purity and fewer impurities, otherwise it will easily affect each other and fail to meet the expected requirements.
Skin care products cannot be made with pure natural extracts
"Consumers usually think that "edible" must be better and safer, and many people are "obsessed" with the concepts of all-natural, non-additive, and pure plants." Wang Peipei introduced, China Consumer Association and China Spice, Fragrance and Cosmetic Industry Association The "Whitening Beauty Skin Care Product Consumption Guidelines", jointly released in 2011, shows that cosmetics are made up of a variety of ingredients, including a variety of chemical ingredients. It is not possible to make skin care products using only pure natural plant extracts.
Niu Dongbin said: "Many cosmetics claim that they do not contain preservatives. This is mainly due to the following situations: The first case is that the products do not contain preservatives, mostly disposable packaging products (such as capsule products) and the matrix itself Products that are not prone to bacteria growth (such as essential oils, lipsticks, toilet water, perfumes, etc.); the second case is suspected of hype. This type of product adds some antibacterial effects, and it is not allowed to use preservatives in the "Cosmetic Safety Technical Specifications" The ingredients in the list that have antiseptic effects, such as pentanediol, octane glycol, etc. However, these ingredients are not necessarily safer than products that use preservatives in accordance with the "Cosmetic Safety Technical Specifications"; the third case is false publicity or misleading Consumer products."
"We should treat the preservatives in cosmetics rationally and scientifically." Niu Dongbin said that China's laws and regulations require all cosmetics to be tested for toxicology or a certain risk assessment before market, generally speaking, strictly in accordance with the "Cosmetic Safety Technical Specifications" 》The cosmetics that require preservatives are safe.
"In addition, there are still many hidden dangers of uncertified'natural' or'organic' products." Wang Peipei said that some alkaloids and volatile components such as fennel, geranium, rose, etc. have potential allergenicity; cloves , Bauhinia and other extracts are plant materials that cause asthma... At the same time, there is no guarantee for the effect of this type of cosmetics. The content of functional substances in natural ingredients is usually low. For example, ginseng, soybean, flaxseed, etc. claim to contain functional proteins and small molecule peptides, but the literature indicates that the proportion of active peptides from ginseng root powder is 0.001%, and then the extract is Adding 0.1%-10% to the formula, it is difficult to rely on the peptides contained in the plant extracts to play a skin-care role.
"And special-purpose cosmetics must be approved by the State Drug Administration to obtain the approval number of the product; imported non-special-purpose cosmetics must be filed with the drug regulatory department; domestic non-special-purpose cosmetics must be filed and obtained at the local provincial drug regulatory agency "Electronic document for record." Niu Dongbin reminded that the above approval number and record electronic certificate are the identification of cosmetics. The approval number should be marked on the product packaging label, although the record number of the electronic record is not required to be marked on the product packaging label , But can be found on the website of the State Drug Administration.