This blog post was submitted by a family member after purchasing cosmetics.
I always knew that many natural (fancy and expensive) beauty products contained oils, proteins and other derivatives from nuts and soy (Aveda loves soy), but I never realized that generic products could also be dangerous territory.
Last week, I went on my monthly trek to spend too much money at CVS. I wandered the isles, gathering strange gels and creams for problems I don’t have. I picked up another little bottle of hand sanitizer, a new nail polish color, some cotton swabs, the standard junk. I grabbed a few random coupons from the ExtraCare card machine to save those extra pennies, and find that one of them is for any CVS brand facial cleanser. I meandered over and pick out a nice new CVS-brand Apricot Facial Scrub. I concluded my shopping, ditched a bunch of the really weird stuff I had picked up, and made my way home.
Later that night, I thought I’d try it out, but something in the back of my mind made me think to read the ingredients, and there it was: “Ingredients: Water, Juglans Regia (Walnut) Shell Powder, …”. I was astounded — who knew facial scrubs had walnuts in them?!
I quickly dug the receipt out of the trashcan and put it in a bag with the facial scrub, ready for me to return the next day and get my money back. I wondered if they’d think it was strange that I was returning a facial cleanser, but they took it off my hands without a problem.
Moral of the story: Read ALL labels, even when you think there’s no possible reason for something to have an allergen in it.
For those readers interested in learning more about hidden allergens, here are a few links from our friends at Avoiding Milk Protein, with tips about some things to look out for: