Guides
How labels work, what the words on them legally mean, and how to read one without needing us.
The goal of these is to make you better at reading labels on your own. An app that only works while you are holding your phone has not taught you anything.
- Drug or cosmetic: which claims are regulated One sentence in the statute decides which rules a product lives under, and it turns on what the maker says rather than what is inside.
- E numbers, decoded An E number is an identifier, not a warning label. It is closer to a passport than a criminal record.
- Hazard versus exposure One idea, and it defuses most of what you will read about ingredients.
- How ingredient scores are calculated Every scanner app gives you a number. It is worth knowing what went into it before you trust it.
- How the law decides a food is healthy There is a legal test for the word healthy, and the surprising thing about it is what it does not contain: any list of ingredients to avoid.
- How to check an ingredient claim yourself Every source this site uses is public. Here is how to reach them, in the order that gets you an answer fastest, including how to check us.
- How to read a cosmetics label The list is honest and complete, and two rules inside it mean it says less than people think it does.
- How to read a hair product label One shelf holds two legal categories, and telling them apart takes about three seconds once you know what to look for.
- How to read a supplement label It is not a food label with different words on it. It is a different document, governed by different rules, and it withholds different things.
- How to read an ingredient label The list on the back follows rules. Once you know four of them, most of the label reads itself.
- Ingredients avoided for the wrong reason A list of corrections, each one traced to the document that settled it, and each one still circulating anyway.
- Ingredients whose source the label hides A short list that does most of the work, because it turns reading every line into checking about a dozen names.
- The INCI name is not the source A naming system that does its job perfectly, and in doing it erases the one thing many readers are trying to find out.
- What "natural", "clean" and "chemical-free" legally mean Some words on a package are regulated. Most of the reassuring ones are not.
- What an allergen label promises, and what it does not One of those two statements is written into statute. The other is not mentioned in it anywhere, and the difference is larger than it looks.
- What comedogenic ratings actually measure The most quoted number in skincare, produced by a test on an animal that is not a person, applied to an ingredient rather than to a product.
- Which cosmetic ingredients are actually drugs A table of the only ingredients in your bathroom whose strength the law requires to be stated, and the ranges they have to sit inside.