The Future

LotusBody.com is going to be undergoing some reconstruction in the coming weeks, the store will remain open in it’s present form until the reconstruction is complete and I will announce the grand re-opening! Some items to look forward to are a podcast/videocast, monthly sales and promotions, all of our new products fully featured and all of your wonderful testimonials! Stay tuned for our first videocast where I will eat some of my Body Butter spread on toast!

Sins of Omission

I am often asked how Lotus Body products differ from all of the other products out there labeled natural and or organic. This can be a complicated question to answer because there is a lot of deception in the marketplace because the competition is heavy. The deception begins with the FDA, who does not police the health and beauty product market at all. This means that people can say whatever they want on their labels with impunity. There are varying degrees of deception.

The first is the lie of omission. They just don’t tell you what they preserve with so it appears that they don’t use any toxic preservatives. But you have to remember that oil and water don’t mix and that water unpreserved will grow mold in 2 to 3 days. Vitamin E, essential oils and rosemary oleoresin are oil-based so they can only preserve the oil portion of the emulsion. You have to also preserve the water portion (water content can be aloe vera, flower waters, milks…) this can only be done with a formaldehyde or phenol based preservative. Grapefruit seed extract will buy you some time but not a lot and they are finding that it is not the grapefruit seed that is actually responsible for the preservation but the parabens that they use to preserve the grapefruit seed extract! So if you are reading a label and there is no listed preservative, assume there is something scary lurking within.

The second lie is “paraben-free” on the label. Parabens are a formaldehyde-based preservative that have been used for years in body care products as well as food. They are also known as methyl-, propyl-, ethyl- and butyl-paraben and have become a big deal lately because they have been found in cancerous breast tumors. People are recognizing that parabens are not a good thing and the big companies are exploiting that for their own gain. Sure there may be no “parabens” in their products but what did they replace it with? If it needed a paraben before and there is nothing listed as a preservative now…what do you think is going on? I will discuss preservatives in depth in a later article.

The third area of deception is in essential oils. As many of you know this is a huge area of contention for me as an aromatherapist who is trained in the use of genuine and authentic medicinal-grade essential oils. All essential oils are NOT created equal, especially in America. I say that because once again this is an unregulated area and there is such an enormous lack of understanding of the healing effects of essential oils in this country that it is almost impossible to tell what is real and what is not. Any company can call any oil a natural or real essential oil even if it is made in a lab and is synthetic. Yes, this is true. I will say that 99.9% of all of the rose and jasmine and neroli and Melissa oils on the market today are synthetic. That is why so many people feel nauseas after smelling rose oil, it is not real. And to make it worse, all synthetic fragrances are formaldehyde based! Now, isn’t that nice. Honestly, if you see any of those oils for sale for less that $100.00 for 5 mls, it is a fake, period.

So, back to the original question, what makes Lotus Body products different from everything else out there? Honesty, integrity and a pit bull attitude regarding labeling. I will never use a synthetic essential oil, I will never use a toxic preservative and I will always tell you exactly what is in my products and to prove to you how pure they are, I will eat them in front of you! How many other companies out there will do that for you?

Peace.

Maria