If this is you
The same ingredient list means different things to different people. These pages start from who is reading.
An ingredient is not good or bad on its own. It is relevant to you or it is not. Each page here collects what actually matters for one situation, and links through to the detail.
- Reading labels for a baby or a small child A short list of things that genuinely matter, and permission to stop worrying about the rest.
- Reading labels for acne-prone skin One of the few shelves where the concentration is printed, next to a scale of numbers that measures a rabbit's ear.
- Reading labels for curly and coily hair The most confidently repeated ingredient list on the internet, checked against what the dermatology literature actually says.
- Reading labels for eczema and atopic skin The most ordinary ingredients in a moisturiser turn into regulated drug actives the moment the product claims to protect skin.
- Reading labels for hair loss and thinning A category where the regulator has already written down what it thinks of the claims, in language nobody quotes.
- Reading labels for menopausal skin A change with a measured rate attached to it, which is more than most of the products aimed at it can say.
- Reading labels for teenage skin A category where the products being marketed hardest are the ones with the least reason to be on a young face.
- Reading labels when an ingredient is banned somewhere else The most repeated claim in food writing, applied to a set of ingredients where it is sometimes exactly right and often not.
- Reading labels when you are pregnant Nine months of checking labels. Here is what is worth checking, and what is not.
- Reading labels when you are watching blood sugar There are three places sugar shows up on a packet, and they answer three different questions. Most people read only one of them.
- Reading labels when you avoid animal ingredients "Vegan" is not a legally defined word. That single fact explains most of what makes this difficult.
- Reading labels when you avoid gluten One of the very few reassuring words on a package that means something exact. The gaps are elsewhere.
- Reading labels when you have a thyroid condition Three ordinary things on a supplement label that interact with a thyroid, none of which the label mentions.
- Reading labels when you keep halal or kosher An ingredient list is designed to tell you what a substance is. Your question is where it came from, and those are not the same question.
- Reading labels when you take a prescription A whole aisle of products that interact with common prescriptions, and not one of them mentions the medicine on the box.
- Reading labels when your skin reacts to everything Sensitive skin is not one thing, which is why generic sensitive-skin advice keeps failing you.
- Reading labels with a food allergy The ingredient list is the most trustworthy part of a package. It is also not the whole answer, and the gap is worth understanding precisely.
- Reading labels with a fragrance allergy The most common cause of cosmetic contact allergy, declared under a single word that names nothing.