What They Put In Lip Gloss Is Banned From Food | Laura DiGirolamo, ESQ

80 to 90% of the lip products you're buying doesn't matter whether it's in a drugstore or whether it's in a very prestige outfit. 80 to 90% of them are made with microplastics. What are the terms that mean plasticizers on the ingredients list? Polymer, copolymer is a plastic. Synthetic wax. Lip products are classed as cosmetic. And when you say cosmetic, that means topical. If we're looking at them as topical products, but we are flavoring them like food, we're reapplying them way more today than we were 30 years ago. Some people are reapplying up to 40 times a day. You're one of the first that I'm telling this about publicly. This is nerve wracking because this is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry and it's just me. And I need help from people like yourself who are unafraid to stand up and go, hey, wait a second, this is wrong. You've spent your whole life eating your lip products. Every lip gloss, every lipstick, every flavored balm, every vanilla frosted lip mask marketed to teenage girls at Sephora. The beauty industry regulates these products almost exactly the same way it regulates, body lotion. But the skin on our lips is completely different and we're ingesting it. Today's guest says one of the biggest blind spots in modern beauty is hiding in plain sight. Products designed for the mouth are being treated like they never enter the body at all. Laura DiGirolamo is a beauty attorney and beauty industry insider turned whistleblower. She helped pioneer clean beauty before clean beauty was even a thing. She advised giants like Sephora on emerging trends and invented one of the first premium healthy deodorants long before wellness beauty became mainstream. She is also the founder of Yom Beauty, a completely clean lip mask with food grade ingredients and zero plastic. If you listen to my bombshell interview this year with Jason Karp on the inside baseball of the food industry, as well as plastic, you are going to love this episode. Same energy. Laura says that many lip products may contain ingredients never intended to be ingested, including plastic, petroleum derivatives, artificial dyes, and compounds already restricted in food in parts of the world. Prepare for some seriously shocking revelations about the lip cosmetic industry and what the science shows is being sold to us without any safety regulation. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. This show is free and the only thing I ask for in return is your five-star reviews, which takes less than six seconds to do. Please welcome beauty lawyer Laura DiGirolamo to Culture Apothecary. Laura, you've spent 20 years in beauty now and you helped build, clean beauty before there ever was clean beauty. Because now we hear this phrase all the time, but you were really at the forefront of this entire explosion. I had built a brand that was the precursor to clean because natural was so confusing that we decided to list out the ingredients that we committed to not using. And then once Sephora saw that people were responding to this, hey, we're going to list that we don't use and it was a laundry list. Then they started to see there's an opportunity and Sephora was one of the first, if not the first, to actually define what clean beauty was and then to start encouraging brands to go exclusively with them. And that's how that whole movement started. But I was at the forefront of that and I saw an opportunity to create the world's first healthy deodorant in the Sephora context. So a cool deodorant that didn't have a lot of aluminum or any of the other ingredients, including propylene glycol. And to make that into a solid stick was a real chemical feat. So when I say chemical, anything that you use, sometimes you can refer to as a chemical molecule, obviously. I don't mean it is full of chemicals. I mean, it was just very difficult to create with a cosmetic chemist, a solid stick that didn't use any of those ingredients that people didn't want under their armpits. So we were the first. We launched that. And sales at Sephora increased in that category by 200 percent. And they went, oh, my God, people want clean, healthy deodorants. We should do more of this. And that's what started that trend. So who were you with Sephora? Like, what were you doing for them? I did start out as a consultant in innovation and brand. So I'm an ideas person. And I was consulting for them on the side, just looking at the gaps in the marketplace and looking at if things weren't really selling as well as they used to, why that might be the case. So understanding consumer behavior. And I was a real nerd. I really got the chemistry of it, even though I'm not a cosmetic chemist. So if I saw an opportunity for a formula to be innovative, I could guide them in that. But I then started my own brand, which was the precursor to clean. And we started with natural fragrances and body butters. And that's when I saw the opportunity for the deodorant. So I was a brand that was exclusive to the brand. And I was a brand that was exclusive to the brand. And I was a brand as a brand founder. So I worked with them as a consultant. And then I switched into creating a brand of my own. Wait, can you say what the brand was? Yeah, it's a brand called La Vanilla. Oh, yeah. Yeah, La Vanilla. They had those perfumes. So perfumes. And I think our big claim to fame was that healthy deodorant. At the time, I would go to Whole Foods and you would see like the salts, the big salts, or you would see sticks, but they were made out of vegetable glycerin, which is a so when you would put them on, they'd make you really moist under the armpit, which is not good if you don't want to stink. And you go into Sephora and you would see at the time, like famous perfume brands that would have a stick, but that was full of propylene glycol. So there was nothing in the like luxury, felt good, was natural, didn't use any of the no-nos. And yeah, I remember La Vanilla. So I worked in Sephora in like 2013, 2014. What? Yeah. So I remember. Oh, my God. Yeah. So we were that was like a big, it was a big deal. That was my time to shine because I was doing things with La Vanilla that was creating that space for clean movement to begin. So how do you go from being the right hand woman to Sephora and helping them blow up and change products to becoming beauty's biggest whistleblower? I see what I've discovered now as something that most people wouldn't have seen. I, I, I'd like to think that most people in the industry just didn't see this either. And because I'm used to finding the white space opportunities for brands, when I saw in this case, regulatory formulation, consumer behavior, it all came together. And then I was like, wait a second, this doesn't, this doesn't, this doesn't compute. We're not looking at lip products the same way. We're looking at lip products the same way. It's more, oh my God, things have changed so much in 30 years and the regulations haven't caught up and the marketplace has just exploded. And, and the gap between how we use lip products and how they're being regulated is so big that I think everybody just follows protocol, right? So if you're a brand founder and you want to go into creating a lip product, you go into a contract manufacturer or someone who formulates and you say, I'd like to make a super juicy, high shine lip gloss. Well, even if it's clean, they're still reaching for the same topical ingredients that they would reach for. Even though it's a lip product, it's a cosmetic. So they have their laundry like, oh, you want higher shine? Let's use more polybutane. Let's use more. It's just how the industry formulates. So as a brand, you're really not going to know about this blind spot unless you're really, really up to date on regulatory and the differences between the regulations cover and how consumers are actually using product. So when I say the blind spot, what's the blind spot? It means external use only. Now, if you put something on your lips, if you and I have a conversation, conversation, you are craning in product all throughout the day as you wear that on your, then you take a sip of water or you have a snack, how many times are we reapplying? So you see that, oh, my lips don't have this on anymore. I'll go back and reapply. Well, where is it going? Now, if you consider most of the products that we're buying today at Sephora or Ulta or any of the beauty retailers, or even at the drugstores, they're flavored like food. Well, why are they flavoring it like food if it's not going in? Why would you care that it tastes like cherry or it tastes like gummy bears or it tastes like birthday cake? Why would that matter? It matters because your tongue is making contact all the time. If I said, let's make that flavored like something really gross, would that product sell? Probably not. It's on your mouth and it's going in. So the blind spot is if we're looking at them as topical products, but we are flavoring them like food, we're reapplying them way more today than we were 30 years ago, how much are we actually taking in? And if you look at the stats, let's look at putting it into very understandable terms like visually. In Europe, where they acknowledge ingestion in the regulation, a grain of rice is what they assume you take in a day. How many people do you know stop at a grain of rice a day in the reapplication? What's reality? Reality is 95th percentile, if you look at the modern usage rates, can go up to nearly half a kilo a year. Which is what? Half a kilo a year. Oh my God. Depending on the lip gloss tube size, it can be 16 tubes, 20 tubes. That's what we're eating. You're eating that much lip gloss a year if you're a frequent user of lip products. Yes. Are you working at Sephora when you find this out and then you're like, I have to get out of here or what's happening? No, no, no, no. No, Sephora is, that was a client a long, long time ago. They were a wonderful retailer who partnered with me as a brand co-founder. Back then, they were awesome partners. The people that I were working with back then were all about paving new ways, which is why I did clean. No, this happened really weirdly after I got really ill. So I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer four and a half years ago. And I had still been working in the industry as a consultant. By then I had sold my business. I had moved to Europe for a better life, still working really hard. And then I fell really ill about four and a half years ago. That's interesting. Breast cancer with the line of work you did. Do you tie that back to being around so many synthetic estrogens? I would say environmental factors now. Everybody is saying for sure there's a tie between how many we're exposed to every day versus what it was 40 years ago, 50 years ago when these regulations started to come into play. So nowadays, how many products do you use in a day? I would definitely say I'm now way more conscientious of bringing that number way down and changing the quality of the types of things. So things like fragrance, I listen to your podcasts and I can say without a doubt, fragrance is one of the things that I am now really careful about. But when you think about it, a lot of lip products actually contain perfume fragrance that you're putting on your lips and taking in. So looking at this blind spot and why it's so important, right? When I got this download and I take it as a download, I got sick. I got out of hospital and I asked myself, what am I doing with my life? And I realized I wanted a greater purpose. In the back of my head, I wanted something bigger in terms of importance in my life to do than just consult and create more great products and brands. And anyway, I ended up taking a regulatory course because I'm a lawyer. So I did a continuing legal education course, which is part of the requirement of keeping your California bar. So I did the course and I came out and I went, was on cosmetic regulations and I went, wow, that is like crazy. So 1930, 1938 FDA, you know, looking at how modern beauty products have evolved. I went to bed that night and I woke up at five o'clock in the morning, like a lightning bolt had hit me. And it was like, wait a second. If lip products are cosmetics, that means they're topicals. And if they're topicals and we're putting it on our mouths, what's being regulated and what's not being regulated. So we're treating lip cosmetics as if they're like foot cream. Correct. 100%. In a nutshell, that's it. But we should be regulating lip products as if they were food. I personally think right now until we, so there's a gap of data in terms of what we're putting in lip products, how much we're ingesting and what the effects are of that on our health. So for example, it's well-documented petrolatum, which is the thing that petroleum jelly is made from, right? Petrolatum, mineral oil. It is proven that it bioaccumulates in the body when you ingest it. What does that mean? It means that if you're putting petroleum jelly on your lips because it's a great occlusive and it blocks in moisture, it is proven that that bioaccumulates when it's swallowed. And that's an oil by-product. Yes. So what does that do to the body? It bioaccumulates and then who knows? It basically accumulates in your organs, in your spleen. So I've got like my own little tub of Vaseline somewhere in my body from being a little kid. I won't use that term, but yeah, pretty much. So what they did in Europe, this was amazing. In 2013, a global association who is meant to be advising on the safety of these chemicals, they said, hey, wait a second, actually, if you're going to use petroleum, petrolatum or mineral oil, we need to make a food grade version of that so that it doesn't bioaccumulate. And so the European Union decided to take that as a recommendation, as a voluntary recommendation for brands. If you're going to use that ingredient, try and make a food grade. I mean, that's how the industry at the ingredient level definitely sees that there is an issue with some of these things going into the body. It's just right now nothing is required from brands or anyone making this stuff to say, is it safe to be ingested? Because at the end of the day, it's for external use only, not for ingestion. But yet we're flavoring this stuff like food and we're taking our six-year-olds or eight-year-olds or 10-year-olds here, pick a lip gloss. And you don't realize that actually, they say 80 to 90% of those lip glosses are made from microplastics. So things like copolymers, things like, you know, they're plastic ingredients flavored like food. It's a what? It was a big aha moment for me. And I was in the industry for over 20 years. So if I was just seeing it at that moment, what are brands going to think when this stuff starts to come out? So how does an entire multi-billion dollar industry miss something like this? Fact. REACH, which is the organization in Europe that is responsible for this. So it's a big aha moment for me. has instituted a phase out of microplastics, for example, from, I think, you know, it was a few years ago, four years ago, to 2035. Okay. So remember when there was this big thing about microplastic beads in body wash? Like no more microplastic beads in body wash because you're washing it off and it's going into the environment. I forgot about that. But yes, now I remember. You just unlocked a core memory for me. Okay. So I apply. That's great. But they also have in this same document that by 2031, lip products need to come with a warning on the box that says contains microplastics. And then by 2035, we need to phase those out. Now, that sounds great. If we already know this, why can't we start doing it now? That's what I'm saying. And not only that, but shouldn't consumers know now that this is what's in the lip product? And so what did you do to get this information to consumers? Because you're like busting this wide open. This is all new for me. So I'm really honored to be a part of this. I'm really grateful that you gave me a safe place to do this. This is nerve wracking because this is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry. And it's just me. Because I can tell you, if it's just me sitting there in the corner going, hey, we shouldn't have microplastics in our lip products. We're eating them off our face. We should at least not flavor them like food and encourage people to eat them. If I don't have help from people like you, I'm just there in the corner and I'm easy to shut up. So we need a consumer movement. We need a movement. And so this is what I've done. When this download happened, I realized I needed to do two things because I'd been in the industry for a long time. The first was to make sure I could substantiate this with teams of experts, that it wasn't just me saying this like an opinion. So I started to gather the biologists, the toxicologists, the cosmetic chemists, the regulatory experts, the lawyers. And I devised two really cool groups of people that said, we're going to write a paper, a peer-reviewed paper that takes data that's out there. It's existing. We're not in a lab making any expert. We're just going to take the data that's there. And we're going to now refocus it to show you that there's a blind spot that we need to address right away. One is regulatory. So everywhere in the world, there is a problem because we're classing lip products as cosmetics, as topicals. So we have to change how we look at that. Regulatory, what is going on in the U.S.? What's going on in Canada? What's going on in the EU? What's going on in the U.K.? What's going on in China? Let's look at the regulatory system and see what's slipping through. And by the way, sometimes regulations, because they're so slow to change, it's easier just to say maybe we start a movement where we're self-policing and we do better. Sometimes you don't need the regulation. You need transparency and you need everybody to commit to a better standard. And that's what I'm hoping what I'm doing will do. So the first thing we did was create this group of experts, create two papers, one on the regulatory frameworks around the world, quantifying the blind spot. We're regulating them like foot cream, as you say. It's got to change. And measuring that up against real world data. How many lip products are we using a day? I mean, there's this Kylie Jenner video that came out and everybody's like, oh, my God, layering four and five lip products in one application. We're not talking about putting on a lip balm now twice a day, which is what these studies from 30 years ago are flagging. We're looking at really high usage rates. of lip products and exposure rates now that have exponentially gone up so the first was create that legal paper the second was to look at lip biology which is different than skin biology now you know in pharma the way you look at lip and mouth tissue is very different than the way you look at regular skin tissue they look at this as a drug delivery system that bypasses your digestive system right so if you take a testosterone pill they clock that around a 30 absorption rate in the stomach and if you put it in your oral mucosa it's 80 so the pharma industry knows that this is like a sponge and yet in the cosmetic world even if there's an absorption you know test that you have to do which most don't require it they look at dermal skin which is 15 to 20 cells deep alone on the top layer this is three to five well people know it's a sponge look we we put nicotine patches in our mouth right right so if we know that it's it's a place of absorption why does the cosmetic industry treat it like regular skin and it's just because nobody's called them out it's because nobody's really said hey lip biology is different than regular skin we need a different model which is what we're building so we have a patent pending on that which i've placed under the non-profit that we have developed to help the industry change and close this gap like i'm really serious about trying to do everything i can to help the industry change i'm not pointing fingers i'm just saying hey join me because this is really important and it's it's a problem now when you have six eight-year-olds 12-year-olds you know the fastest growing market from age seven to sorry nine to 17 young girls they're eating microplastics off their lip every day and nobody's saying anything everyone is constipated everyone you're walking around like i'm tired i have brain fog i feel bloated i haven't had a thought since 2017 well yeah because you're constipated you're constipated your body is dry you are internally a desert and it's not your fault because the water you're drinking useless we've stripped everything out of it the soil is depleted that's growing your food the minerals are gone you're drinking flat dead water and wondering why your body isn't functioning because you need minerals you need magnesium you need actual hydration not just liberal tears which of course those are very tasty but they're not enough this is why i use taylor duke's wellness electrolytes this is real hydration unrefined sea salt coconut water powder real fruit no artificial flavors no natural flavors no dyes no sugar and they actually are loaded with magnesium which most of you are severely lacking which is why you're stress tired and constipated this fixes that you drink this and suddenly you have energy your brain works your cravings calm down your body starts acting like it's been reintroduced to civilization you wonder why you're constantly like starving and on edge it's because you're depleted of minerals and for everyone kids pregnant women nursing moms you can all drink this because it's actually clean it is perfect do you have for spring for your reset travel workouts late nights you're just trying to feel like a human again because hydration isn't just water it's minerals and most of you are walking around severely depleted pretending coffee is a solution use code alex clark for 10 off at taylor dukes wellness.com that's code alex clark for 10 off electrolytes at taylor dukes wellness.com i need to say something because i see this in my dms every single day alex i want to get my health but i just don't know where to start or i'll do it later when i have more money you know i've heard every version of this and i get it the system is confusing on purpose you go to a doctor they check like five things they tell you you're fine they send you home meanwhile you're still feeling exhausted inflamed just off so then you do nothing you wait and waiting becomes your health plan this is why i'm really excited about what jevity just did they launched a completely free tier not a trial free you go to go jevity.com upload blood work that you already have from any lab and they give you a personalized longevity blueprint that analyzes over 90 biomarkers and actually shows you what's going on when i saw my blueprint i didn't just want to know i mean i saw all that info and i wanted to fix it and if that's you after finding out about what's going on with you you can do the jevity plus membership you get an actual functional clinician who walks through your results and builds a plan around you not a template they build you a plan and they don't stop at just testing you get access to supplements peptides hormone optimization nutrition help real protocols based on your labs they test over 90 biomarkers and they give you a personalized longevity blueprint that analyzes over 90 biomarkers retest every six months adjust your plan and you have a care team you can actually message go to go jevity.com use code alex again go to go jevity.com use code alex when you took this team of beauty toxicologists and you were looking into some of the top lip products from the biggest brands out there which brands are guilty of selling girls almost exclusively plastic lip gloss i would say that 80 to 90% of the people who 90% of the lip products you're buying doesn't matter whether it's in a drug store or whether it's in a very prestige outfit like a retailer that's very high end 80 to 90% of them are made with lip with microplastics and that's just one of the ingredients like this is a much bigger story for example i'll just say this you know the ingredient titanium dioxide it should be banned in our food correct and in europe in 2022 it should be banned in our food correct and in the eu they banned titanium dioxide because when ingested they are saying there's no safe level it's a genotoxin and if it's a genotoxin it means it's chemically altering your dna so if there's no safe level of titanium dioxide when ingested and we're ingesting our lip products and even organic and clean use titanium dioxide as a colorant it's an opacity agent it's a to color it and you're eating it off your lips and you're trying to get it out of a kellogg's you know cereal who's looking at the titanium dioxide and lip products which brands are using titanium dioxide all of them anything that's colored anything that's colored will use titanium even the organic ones will use titanium that's why you do have a handful of products around the brands around the world that say titanium dioxide free but in lip products it is very rare we are talking about a lot of products that are titanium dioxide free but in lip products it is very rare below five percent of lip brands even less than that okay so let me just throw out a couple names that yeah are super popular so i for years and years and years was addicted to laneige addicted i had that little pot and in fact the the lip mask technically lip mask you're supposed to just do it at night i had to have it all day long every day and i am putting that on constantly um now i've i've moved on i i love the primally pure lip balm so that's what i use so i've been off it for like a year and a half now but i've been using it for a long time and i've been using it for a long time i was a laneige addict what can you tell me about them if i were to be laneige if i were to be them i would go back and look at my ingredient list and try to disassociate food flavoring with plasticized ingredients that's probably where i would start because the delicious that the you open up a tub of that and it hits you in the face with how perfumed it is it is oh and it just smells so delicious the other thing on laneige products it says like lake dye number five and all that so it's like it's like food dye but cosmetic version colors right okay so now you're getting now you're getting into oh god this is so layered this is why i had to do the papers because this is so layered and it's different for every country because i keep seeing these like i'm saying food dye because i don't know you know this is cosmetic dyes those are cosmetic dyes those are cosmetic dyes so so we know that food dye is bad artificial food dye is cause medic dye bad in in lip products i would say i would avoid them because they are the fda started regulating synthetic dyes in cosmetics because of uh you know making sure that when they make synthetic dyes levels of contamination for example are really uh looked at and regulated right because when you make a synthetic dye it can be contaminated with heavy metals that's why it's so important to make sure that the dyes that you are using in cosmetics are regulated that's why the fda stepped in i think and started regulating synthetic dyes so if you want to make any product any cosmetic product in the u.s and you want to use a colorant a dye that needs to be it's the only ingredient that requires pre-approval at the fda before using it in a product so if you're a manufacturer of a synthetic dye you get that pre-approval from the fda and then that gets um released as a an agreed upon synthetic dye that you can use in cosmetics the problem with this is exposure levels right remember i said microplastics this is just one of the ingredients we should be concerned about in lip products because of the high levels of ingestion rates that we are having with today's usage but you also have titanium dioxide which is almost in every colored lip product and that is not safe apparently according to the eu when ingested we're trying to get out of the food system and we're trying to get out of the food system in the u.s we know we want to get td out of food for a reason right well if you're taking it in off your lips anyone every time i see someone with bright colored red lipstick and they're arguing about taking titanium dioxide out of food i'm like can i take that out of your lipstick too because it's like it's i hope that it's a titanium dioxide free red lipstick but they're hard to find if the majority of lip glosses lip masks lip oils and lip balms are plastic Are lipsticks also majority plastic? luxury brands Estee Lauder YSL makeup forever luxury makes no difference they're plastic lip sticks could be made with more natural ingredients like beeswax that you can get better lipstick products but to make an opacity to make a color on lip that really pops you have to use titanium dioxide right now but I mean obviously I'm working with Yom Beauty on food grade alternatives that are also cosmetic grade but food grade alternatives so the innovation is catching up but the majority of lipsticks will be using titanium dioxide you know when you look at the back of a box and it says plus minus titanium dioxide on the ingredient means it could or could not contain depending on whether or not it's a color so let's say you go out and you look at one of these very high-end luxury brands that does a range of lip glosses they have a clear one and then they have eight colored ones and on the back it'll say plus minus titanium dioxide that's because the clear one doesn't have it oh wow but the other eight that have color in it will have it in order to create the color on lip so it's an it's an ingredient that's widely used by the cosmetic industry to create a white tone that makes the color pop if you're listening and you want to know does my lipstick or does my lip gloss or my lip balm or lip oil have plastic in it what are the terms that mean plasticizers on the ingredients for example I would look at anything that has the word copolymer and then dive deeper into where that copolymer comes from so polymer copolymer is a plastic so you should look at that and say hmm an interesting one which we are just now starting so again I did two things once I discovered the blind spot the first is to create the non-profit the non-profit is to close this gap and create consumer awareness with the experts that you know can help us change as quickly as possible right part of that is to look at what ingredients we should really be avoiding altogether given the oral exposure right it's not just swallowing it it's oral mucosa so we have to look at the mouth very differently so if you look at something that has plastics in it chances are you're going to have plastic in it and you're going to have plastic in it chances are it's going to have nanoplastics in it and if you put that on something that's three to sell three to five cells deep what is what is happening there nobody knows because we have never looked at it it's a big blind spot look at things like copolymer look at things like synthetic wax like synthetic wax is really interesting one through this research you look at synthetic wax what's what's the number one thing that people say when they're marketing their beauty brand it's vegan it's vegan right and you think vegan means cruelty-free it not that those two things are not synonymous cruelty-free is cruelty-free look for a cruelty-free seal vegan means there's no animal or animal byproduct in it so if you want to use beeswax you can't claim vegan oh so if it's vegan it's just chemicals i mean what are you going to use instead of beeswax synthetic wax what synthetic wax plastic beats me you have to you have to look into what synthetic wax is and i can tell you because i just looked under a microscope with this lab that we're working with and they were like wait a second this is not polyethylene this is what is this and you look at it the particle sizes are exactly the same as a microplastic they're solid they don't biodegrade and they're they're not water soluble they behave just like a microplastic but what is it and if you look at what is in a synthetic wax it's not a real transparent ingredient on like they don't say where it comes from is it is it coming from a plant wax and a plant ester is it coming from uh petroleum it's not listed on the box so you don't know so i would just avoid synthetic wax altogether in my opinion i just don't know where that's coming from so i'd rather not use that i'd rather take a beeswax any day over a synthetic wax because i know where that comes from and you can source things from bees in a very humane way that support colonies that support you know i mean we've looked into this with yam beauty so there's a way to do it responsibly and i would take that over synthetic wax any day cruelty free is important vegan is not important how many people are vegan in this world one percent one percent of people are vegan so i'm not saying cruelty free is not important cruelty free we have a great partnership with cruelty free we uh love cruelty free everything should be cruelty free we should not be testing on animals i'm highly against it but vegan does not mean cruelty free what vegan means is you have to find alternatives to wonderful ingredients like beeswax we took three of the world's very readily available very popular products and we did an analysis under the lip service alliance we looked at what is in these products and the level of i mean it's it's right there on the side if you see something that's a plasticizing and ingredient on the side you know that if you test it for microplastics it's likely going to have microplastics and that's what we were finding and and and the thing is that there is no standardized test in the industry for a brand to say hey let's go and test my lip product for microplastics we're not talking about contamination right like if you go and you buy a drink and it was made on a line and it had some sort of contamination with microplastics that's that's pretty typical microplastics are everywhere what we're seeing in these formulas is that they're made from microplastic ingredients so if you look at copolymers you look at polybutane you look at you know and and by the way polybutane is not technically considered a microplastic even though it's a plastic so polybutane is an ingredient that's used in a lot of lip products now if i were to tell you what polybutane really is tell us well i i did i just went i'm gonna just see if there's an adjacent industry that uses polybutane and if you look at it it's literally liquid plastic it's like polybutane is liquid but it's sticky and it's tacky and it's what we use in gloss not we as in me i don't use it but it's what the industry typically uses in lip gloss and in lip oils and in anything that's got a shine or a tack so if you go this lasts a long time whatever look to see if there's polybutane on there polybutane is the same ingredient that they use in lip gloss and in lip oils and in anything that's got a shine or a tack so if you in rodent and fly traps to stick the pest to the to stick the animal to the to the the gluey bit yeah it's the gluey bit so so if i were to tell you that a great majority of lip products it doesn't matter if it's a premium brand or if it's a dollar store brand doesn't matter polybutane is in a lot of lip products i would not touch it with a 10-foot pole again it's completely non-toxic when you're talking about it being on the outside of the body they put it in these rodent traps and they think oh well if you put your fingers on am i going to get poisoned it's not poison it's just glue you are putting glue on your lip yeah i mean you can easily go and look this up if you want to look up which brands have polybutane in it you can easily see it's amazing brands that i love it could be it could be i'm gonna get sued for this how it's public on their ingredients box because people will just shut me up they want me to be quiet i'm already getting it that's why i'm saying i'm so happy that i'm here because the more people get behind me and make the industry wake up and become accountable to say at the very minimum we should not be flavoring this stuff so it's delicious to lick off your lips you know polybutane is something that nobody's studied in terms of ingestion what happens when we ingest it i'm saying we don't know because the data's not there but if petrolatum is bioaccumulating what's what's polybutane doing when you're ingesting it so if you had to give a percentage estimate of how much of a conventional lip product is straight plastic what would be a fair answer well fair answer is 80 to 90 percent of lip products contain microplastics and if there's one microplastic ingredient there are typically many because it's what's used to create shine tack and long wear do these huge beauty brand execs know that this stuff is in their products probably not and i'm that's that's what i'm trying to say is that i work with so many wonderful people over the years and i was one of them in the industry that would just say oh yeah lip products and you just make lip products the way you know that the regulations allow you to make it's completely legal we spend so much time talking about clean food clean skincare clean makeup and clean household products but what about the clothes touching some of the most absorbent parts of our body all day long i'm talking about your socks your bras your underwear your kids underwear the basics that we wear every single day and rarely think twice about that's why i love q for quinn the cleanest gots certified organic cotton basics that i've ever found their founder actually started the company because she couldn't find organic cotton socks for her son who struggled with eczema and what began as a search for cleaner basics has grown into a full line of gots certified organic cotton essentials for the entire family they've got underwear bras socks loungewear activewear even organic cotton underwear for kids which is something that more parents should be thinking about i also love that they offer undyed options for people who want the fabric in its most natural state, as well as beautiful plant-dyed pieces that skip the synthetic dyes found in so many conventional textiles. These are the basics that you wear every day, so you should make them cleaner. Use code ALEX for 15% off all of your non-toxic basics at q4quin.com. That's q4quin.com. Code ALEX for 15% off. Can we talk about cereal mascots for a second? Because when you look at them as an adult, it's honestly a little unsettling. You've got a rabbit committing cereal theft, a leprechaun hiding from children who are essentially stalking him for marshmallows, a tiger screaming like he hasn't slept in 72 hours, and a bird having a full psychological breakdown over chocolate puffs. I think the reason those cereals needed cartoon animals screaming at you in the first place is because the ingredients are basically a lab experiment. Most cereals, even the ones pretending to be healthy with words like multigrain or a heart health sticker on the box, are full of synthetic pesticides, refined sugar, artificial dyes, and ultra-processed junk designed for big food to make you feel like you're eating food. So I buy Lovebird cereal. I keep so much on hand because it's my boyfriend's favorite snack with A2 whole milk when he comes over or raw milk. It was started by a dad who left his big food job to make real cereal for his daughter. Think of it like your childhood cereal went to therapy, cleaned up its life, and started listening to Culture Apothecary. Gosh, I hope so. Lovebird removes the fake stuff, the pesticide-soaked grains and all that sugar, and instead uses organic whole food ingredients like prebiotic fiber-rich cassava from Regeneron. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Honey for sweetness. Everything is third-party tested. They donate 20% of profits to fight childhood cancer, and they're 100% family-owned and independent. I'm friends with the owner, Parker, and Parker will help K-12 schools swap junk cereal for organic cereal at the same price, and so many of you have already gotten your kids' schools to switch. If you want to do that, go to lovebirdfoods.com. Use code ALEX20 for 20% off your purchase. That's lovebirdfoods.com. Code ALEX20 for 20% off. As you've been coming out with this information, have brands tried to silence or discredit or dismiss you? There's one company that is being extremely unreasonable on a different matter that has to do with trademark, and I just decided, okay, well, I'm out. I'm going to change the name. I'm going to do something else because I just don't want to put my energy into legal battles, and I just have a feeling that that's what's going to start happening. Is there anything besides titanium dioxide that's being phased out of our food that's still being allowed on our lips? Well, the synthetic dyes would definitely be. If you mix all of these things into one, and you think, how many times a day do I apply it? Let's look at some of these ingredients. The plastics are just one of them. That's just one part of it. Titanium dioxide, it's another big one. Petrolatum or mineral oil, huge, and it's proven that if it's not a food-grade petroleum. Petrolatum, which I don't know how you make food-grade mineral oil, but it can happen where it's designed not to be ingested in the same way as a cosmetic grade, then I would put that on the list. Petrolatum, mineral oil, perfume. Don't know anybody who'd want to be putting perfume on their salad. Why would you put it on your lips and eat it? But it's in a lot of stuff. So if you see perfume slash fragrance in your lip product, you're eating that off your lips, and it's also on your mucus. It's on your mucosal membrane, which is, you bypass your digestive system with something like perfume, and you put it into this bloodstream. You know, this has got direct access to your bloodstream. That's when you have to worry about endocrine disruption, right? So we're putting perfume on something that has very little barrier protection. Which, you know, clean brands. I know you have Yom Beauty, which by, oh my God, I will just say this, and like, this is not a sponsored episode. You're not a sponsor of my show. I get paid zero dollars to say this. You know, I told you I had this Laneige addiction. Your product, this Yom Beauty lip balm or whatever, is an exact dupe. It is an exact dupe to Laneige. We think it's better. Well, it is because it's completely clean. Even the tinted color in it, it's all like food. So what we did with Yom Beauty, so getting back to when you said, okay, so what did you do? You had this download. Then what? So aside from forming the lip service, which is meant to help the industry to change, I'm inviting the industry to change with me as quickly as possible. This isn't a finger pointing. This is an arms open, wide, come and help me change this as quickly as possible. The second thing was to prove that we can do it better. That's what Yom Beauty is. It's a proof of concept. And we decided to make the bar really high because we don't have a lot of this data that we need for this very sensitive, area of our bodies that we are inundating with product all day long. And it's in a glass jar. Food safe glass jar. So Yom Beauty is a proof of concept. And what we did there was it's really important to have cosmetic grade as a standard because that's for skin, right? So when you're putting something on your skin, that's what cosmetic grade addresses. But in addition, we went a step above, even though it wasn't legally required, to make sure every single ingredient was food grade certified. And what that means is that every ingredient is food grade certified. And that's what we're doing. There has both a cosmetic regulation certificate and a food grade certificate so that if it accidentally goes into your body, it's food grade certified. And we don't just use any standard. We use EU standard. So as you know, in the food system and the food supply and the food regulations, the EU tends to be more strict when it comes to what it allows in its food. So we are using food grade standards at the EU level. This is really important because this was one of the first questions I get asked when I talk to people about this. They're like, well, what about my app? I can scan my app and it'll tell me like some of these lip products that you scan, they get like 80, 90, 100 percent. They're on the wrong algorithm. What do you mean? So if I tell the app clean means this, this, this, this, this. But that ingredient list is about a topical. It's not about whether or not it's safe to ingest. Then your algorithm is testing safety based on topical safety. Now, if you say, let's look at titanium dioxide when it's ingested. Let's look at the data there. Let's look at petroleum, petrolatum when it's ingested. Let's look at polybutane or hydrogenated when it's ingested. You look at it when ingested. Let's not even talk about the mucosal thing, because that's really complicated right now and that's fine. But like, just talk about ingestion. App were to say, is this safe to eat? What do you think those ingredients would flag? Now, I can tell you from scanning some of those clean products and looking at them as a lip safety and I look at their safety scores, I'm like, how does something with copolymer, a plastic, how does that get a safety rating so high? Because it's not looking at you're eating your lip product. So what I would say is I would love to invite the top apps to join the Lip Service Alliance. We will give you access to the lip model and let's start testing lip safety the right way. Let's look at ingestion. How much are you eating? And let's look at the absorption through lip. Now score it. As a consumer, there were many years I assumed if it's being sold at a grocery store, this has gone through extensive testing to make sure that it's safe. I'm thinking the same with my cosmetics. If I'm going into a big department store or big box store to buy cosmetics, this might not be safe. This must be going through all sorts of rules and regulations in order for it to be sold to me. What is the reality of how much cosmetics are being tested in the United States before we're allowed to purchase? So the FDA was formed in 1938. Not a history lesson, just an idea of how long ago. And then you think back in 1938, how many people were wearing makeup. Okay, so that's when it was started. That's why in 2022, they started MoCRA as a branch of the FDA for cosmetics, the Modernization of Cosmetic Regulation Act, okay? But since even MoCRA in 2022, no one's updated lip regulations. It's just still the same as it was in 1938. So just to give you some context, how are we applying? What are we applying? How are we making products in lip? So that's the gap in the U.S., 1938 to today. When you think about how the regulation works for cosmetics, there was no pre-market testing required for any product or any ingredient in a cosmetic before it goes to market except for synthetic dyes in color cosmetics. That's it. And that, again, helps to regulate whether or not something is contaminated with heavy metals. That's it in the U.S. That's it? That's all there is? If you want to make a product, you go to a contract manufacturer and you say, I'd like to make a lip product. And they go, okay, great. What do you want? Where? High shine. They have libraries of formulas. They've been doing it like this. And then there are ingredient companies that come and say, oh my God, we made this even higher shine. We made this so that you can make a 72-hour wear lip stain. Well, who's tested that on the mucosal membrane? Nobody. Nobody. There's no testing on oral mucosa membrane or lip vermilion membrane or what happens if that accidentally goes in when you're eating it. So what happens when a girl starts using flavored lip products at age seven and then reapplies them for 15 years? That's a good question. We just don't know. Well, actually, maybe we do know. We do know. Everyone is sick. Everybody's experiencing infertility. These regulations and rules have not been updated for how many years? Since 1938 in the U.S. Since 1938. So actually we have seen multiple generations go through this and we're not getting better. So obviously I don't think it's only lip balm, but there's a million things, especially in America, that we are allowing into our clothing, allowing into our food, allowing into our environment with pesticides and allowing into our cosmetics that is totally inhumane. It's not good. And this is the thing. I think that the free marketplace is really great. I think that, you know, encouraging people to be innovative is really great. But I think we now in the in the beauty industry, we need to take responsibility. Should there be age restrictions or warnings on lip products? Well, I mean, this is what Europe is trying to do with REACH, right? They said by 2031, lip products need to come with the warning that it has microplastics in it. But I think we need to do that. We need to do better than that. That's why the Lip Service Alliance exists. We need to look at this as soon as possible, create that lip model where we're testing on the right type of skin tissue in the lab so we know how everything is being absorbed and what's happening. We're not we should be testing it on dermal models, which is what some people do. It's not legally required, but some people do. And that's another thing, by the way, when we look at ingestion rates. So that first paper that I told you that we were working on on the regulatory framework, this is in peer review right now. You look at all of these global frameworks, US, UK, EU, and you say, is ingestion acknowledged at the regulatory level for lip products? So we know we put them on, we flavor them like food, we're eating them. Does the regulation acknowledge? We will acknowledge that you eat 0.05 grams of this a day, right? Most regulatory frameworks don't even acknowledge ingestion. So think about that before you buy a product. That product was not screened for ingestion. And that is what is happening throughout the day, especially as you apply it over and over and over again. That's the blind spot. Then you have the second level of the blind spot, which is it's lip vermilion. It's not regular skin. So what's going through this into our bloodstreams? I guess for people that have a hard time wrapping their mind around this or why this is such a big deal. Imagine the fit parents would throw if a child's toy company, baby company like Little Tykes, for example, flavored their plastic baby toys. Yes. And babies are putting that stuff in their mouth and then, oh, this tastes good. So I'm really just munching on this plastic. Parents would be in an uproar. Well, I started crying when I saw a clip because you can go on to TikTok now and you can see young girls doing taste tests. Of lip product that that's flavored like a dessert, flavored like a food, flavored like a nostalgic dessert company. Like Dr. Pepper, Krispy Kreme. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you look at what actually is in that product and you realize that you're associating something that's plastic with food and you're making it bright colored. You're making it like you're flavoring it and you're naming it something like cotton candy or whatever. Birthday cake. You have to now then think. If it didn't have that. If it didn't have the flavor in it and it didn't have that pretty packaging and I just put it in a lump on a plate and I gave someone a spoon, would you eat it? But that's what you're doing. So kids, and this is what I think happened. I think back four or five years ago when moms, you know, kids were getting really excited about adult skin care and they were going into these retailers and they were saying, mommy, mommy, I want that mask or I want that cleanser. I want. And teen skin especially was suffering from that. And so what would happen is, oh, no, you're not allowed. You're not allowed to buy that skin care. You're too young for that. You're only nine. You're only 10. But mommy, I want to go to X retailer. I want to go to Sephora. I want to be, you know, take me. I want to buy something. Well, what can you buy? What's the safest thing? Oh, that lip gloss flavored like a dessert. No problem. That's why that lip market, I think, is exploding the way that it is. So I think it is. You make a really good point. Moms, moms, especially when they hear this are going to be mortified because they're thinking, oh, I did the right thing. I didn't. I didn't get that skin care product that is going to ruin my daughter's skin. Yeah. The moms are bargaining with the 11 year olds who are wanting drunk elephant skin care. And they're like, that's insane. I'm not doing that here. You can pick lip gloss out. Correct. I mean, it's benign. Like, just pick up. It's cherry flavored. How bad can it be? And then you look at it choice, basically. Yeah. And so I think that it's a day of reckoning now because we are smarter today. We have sharing of information today that we didn't have 10, 20. 30 years ago. And now is the time to really look at what is in the lip product before you put it on your mouth or you give it to your kid to put it on their mouths. So if if regulators had to rewrite lip product rules from scratch today, what should immediately change? Two things. One, we have to acknowledge that, like, just like I, I products like in the in the U.S., they're looking at how sensitive this mucosal membrane is for the eye. We're we're regulating more specifically. For eye products. How are we not doing that for lip? So one, you have to just acknowledge it is a different type of skin to the rest of your face. Today, we don't make that distinction anywhere in the world. This isn't just a U.S. problem. We treat lip skin like dermal skin. This regular, which has got a barrier. It's got hair. It's got sebaceous glands. It's it's built to take things to keep things out of the skin. This is a sponge for a reason. It's your mouth. It's meant to take things in. So one, I think regulators need to potentially relook at the lip biology. And we just we have a patent pending on the lip model at the Lip Service Alliance so that we can fund this research. I could have been a bajillionaire and had this as my own patent. I want the Lip Service Alliance to be the engine that funds the research. And so this lip patent model for us is exciting because if people want to use the lip model to test. So if you want to test on lip skin. So like, I don't know if you know about this, but we we do not condone animal testing whatsoever. So right now, when you want to test a cosmetic, you use a dermal test. It's actually owned by a very big company. And any time you want to test on dermal skin, you use this laboratory skin model. It's human human tissue. It's in a Petri dish. And that's how they determine how fast does something go into the skin. Right. But it's it's dermal skin. It's not the same. It's not. The same as the sponge. So we created the world's first lip model so that we can really look at how these specific ingredients get absorbed into lip tissue. So that's the first thing we need to understand that and acknowledge that lip tissue is different to the rest of the face, the rest of the body. It's not like foot cream. Right. We shouldn't be regularly like foot cream. And the second is that we have to do better, more modern studies on how much people are actually eating. Right. So do you remember back in the early 2000s, there was that whole lead lip scare and lipstick? No, I would have been too little to know. Oh, my God. OK, of course. Oh, OK. So back in the early 2000s, it was said, oh, my God, they found lead in lipstick. Yeah. Lead contamination in lipstick. I mean, today they're even finding cadmium. They're finding all kinds of heavy. It's the synthetic dyes. It's because the there's a contamination issue. Right. That's why it's meant to be regulated. Synthetic dyes are meant to be regulated. But the reason why that story went away is because they rely the industry, the media, they rely on old studies from the early 2000s that say, well, if you're a woman, you're really only putting on lipstick twice a day. And if you're only putting it on twice a day, you're only going to be taking in about 0.05 grams of it. So the amount of lead you're taking in is negligible. It's a 30 year old study. So now you go to the modern usage rates. So the law needs to acknowledge how often are people applying lip products? How often are you applying it? So how often how many grams are you actually taking in a day? Well, that exposure rate is what needs you need to acknowledge that you're eating this stuff off your lips and be have an understanding of how much is actually getting, you know, taken into the body. There are no regulations. In the world that are doing this, you know, what changed the way I think about cleaning products, realizing that a clean house shouldn't actually have a smell somewhere along the way. We've been conditioned probably by marketing to believe that if our house smells like fresh linen, mountain breeze, or some artificial lemon scent, then that means it's clean. But what if that smell is actually the thing that we should be questioning? When I started learning more about indoor air quality and all the synthetic fragrances hidden in conventional cleaning products that are disrupting our hormones and also making us fat. Yes. Look it up. I completely changed my cleaning routine. And so I love branch basics. Their entire system is built around one plant and mineral based concentrate that cleans virtually everything in your home. Counters, bathrooms, laundry, windshield wiper, fluid, produce, makeup brushes, you name it. No synthetic fragrances, no harsh chemicals, no endocrine disrupting ingredients lurking behind a fake clean smell. And honestly, once you switch, you realize your home can smell like nothing. Just clean. As someone who cares a lot about reducing unnecessary toxin. and exposure, Branch Basics has earned a permanent spot in my home under my kitchen sink. I love knowing that it's safe around kids, pets, guests, everyone I care about. Make this year the year that you say goodbye to toxic cleaning products. Right now, my listeners get 15% off the premium starter kit by using code alex15 at branchbasics.com. That's code alex15 at branchbasics.com. I have a friend. She goes on a first date with a guy, and somehow they get on the topic of toothpaste. And he goes, yeah, I use this red cinnamon toothpaste with sparkles. And she's like, wait, doesn't that have red 40? And he goes, well, yeah, but I found a case in an abandoned warehouse, an abandoned warehouse. He's like, they don't even make it anymore, but I use it because it makes my brain feel buzzy. And she's like, that seems dangerous. What if it's expired? And he just looks at her and he goes, I like danger. And obviously, obviously, she said yes to a second date. Sometimes your friends make terrible decisions. Don't be like my friend, and don't be like her warehouse toothpaste boyfriend. You zebra. Their toothpaste tablets are actually clean. No fluoride, no weird questionable ingredients, no dyes, just chew, brush, done. It's simple. It works. And you're not brushing your teeth with something that sounds like a science experiment. And while you're at it, their floss is made of real silk, peppermint oil, and xylitol, not plastic, not polyester, not slowly shredding microplastics into your gums every night, like some kind of dental horror show. It's actually been tested. There are no detectable forever chemicals. This is really good floss and toothpaste. I love it. Go to yayzebra.com. Use code Alex for 10% off. Go to yayzebra.com and use code Alex for 10% off. So when do your peer-reviewed papers come out? And then once they come out, what happens? So right now, they're at what we call a high-impact journal. So there are going to be a lot of eyeballs when this thing gets published. And these two papers, I would say in the next two, three, maybe four weeks, we're at a weird time because a lot of the people who are peer-reviewing, they're professors. They're people who are reviewing papers. Right now, it's a very busy, busy time. So we might look at next three weeks, next four weeks. And when this happens and this comes out and you're able to speak publicly about now we're connecting all the dots, right? Like in one paper, you see here's the data of how often somebody typically applies a lip product. Here are how regulations regulate lip products. There's a gap. I'm hoping what that does is it makes all the brands in the world, all the industrial. In ingredient manufacturers in the world want to say, do you know what? We didn't see this. Now we need to do something about it. Let's join the lip service alliance as a nonprofit lip service. I say lip service because it's like surface level safety doesn't make sense for lips. It's no, no more lip service for this. We need to treat lips with the respect that they deserve. They're a portal into the body. They are a sponge. They are a very sensitive part of the body and we are eating things right off of them all day long. So. Let's make the change as quickly as possible. The very minimum I'm hoping because that particular paper, the very minimum it clocks this trend. And I want to say trend, but it's been around for so the gourmand flavoring of these lip products. If you're going to flavor something like food, we should have some understanding of making sure that people know that it's not food. There should be some warning on labels. This is not a food product or, you know. I don't know. But flavoring something like a well-known dessert, you just assume as a cause as a consumer that it's OK to go in to lick it. I mean, that's what's happening on TikTok. Remember really early 2000. I do remember this because I would have been in elementary school. I'm way older than you. So definitely I'll remember. I thought this is the coolest thing ever is Jessica Simpson came out with these desserts. I used to work with. Yes. OK. Her line of like sprays and you could like lift your arm. It was like let's talk about let's talk about. So Randy Schindler is the founder, was the founder of that. And she was so ahead of her time. Lickable. It was lickable. It was lickable, edible, lickable. And it was that food associate. I would say that hers were definitely closer to what you would want. But even there, like I say, titanium dioxide, a lot of these things that you would find in products. Nowadays, we know things that we didn't know back then. So I think that. What I would say is food grade certified in addition to cosmetic grade certified is where you want to be. That's why we created Yom. There's so many things. I'm like thinking of other categories to like lube, for example. OK, like they make edible lubes. So you're ingesting that. Yeah. And what's in that? Like at your average drugstore or whatever. Like that's got to be disgusting, too. I haven't really looked into that. But one of the people that we are folding into this whole lip service alliance comes from that. And I think that's a really good example of a lot of the things that we're trying to do. Because the tissue down there is just as absorbent. And that's another area that needs to evolve as quickly as possible. I hope that this starts a trend where we actually look at the fact that that tissue absorbs things. Well, the way that this is going to get massive attention once these I'm just predicting once these papers come out so that the brands see it and actually take notice. What's got to happen is big media companies. I mean, the Atlantic. The Atlantic and New York Post and all these people, the New York Times, they need to be writing stories about these papers. And then it's blowing up now. It's viral on social media. Everybody's sharing it. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And then that's when, like, they start making noise. And then the beauty brands are going to be like, oh, no, the consumer is awake. Right. And so that's so when I discovered this blind spot, what I didn't want to do was just take to social media and go, oh, my God, you're not going to believe this. I thought Clean made such a mess. Of people's minds. Nobody knew what to buy anymore. If somebody says Clean is not a regulated word. So if I go to one place and I say, what does Clean mean? It could mean one thing. Like, I can tell you hand on heart. I was shocked that some Clean brands still have plasticizing ingredients in their lip products. I'm like, how does that work? It's because it's a cosmetic. It's a topical. I think that once this thing hits. I hope that what will happen is people will see an opportunity. When we look at business, what has beauty been banging on about for all these years? Innovation, innovation, innovation. Well, what's real innovation is if you can give me a food grade certified ingredient that performs like a cosmetic grade ingredient. So, for example, at Yom Beauty, we look at things like film formers. So things that are plastic that make. The product lasts long on your lips. OK, when you look at those plastic ingredients, we look to nature and food and we say, is there anything that we can see in the food industry that kind of behaves the same way that we can borrow from? And where it's been really hard is to you go to these food ingredient manufacturers and you say, we really love product X. We want to use it in our cosmetics, but it's a different regulatory system. So now I have to jump through hoops to see if that company can now. Also get the same ingredient certified to be cosmetic grade, because at the end of the day, I'm making a lip product. It has to be cosmetic grade. So the innovation for these ingredient companies around the world, and I hope people are listening because this is going to be a huge opportunity for the big. Ingredient companies of the world make certified food grade ingredients that can also be cosmetic grade ingredients specifically for lip. So, for example, you go buy your smoothie, right? Your beautiful, bright red smoothie. Chances are the color in that smoothie comes from a beetroot, right? Or red cabbage, right? Yeah, I put beetroot powder, organic beetroot powder in my smoothie every morning. There you go. It makes it pink. And so in the food regulations in the U.S., you can use that beetroot powder, no problem, to color any natural product. So let's say you want to make a red cookie and you say, I use organic beetroot as the red color in. Completely legal. This is going to blow your mind. When I discovered this, I thought, this doesn't make any sense. And this is why the Lip Service Alliance has to roll up its sleeves and start helping the industry to change. The FDA says that in order to make a cosmetic, you have to use their pre-approved dyes because they're trying to protect the public. I get where this is coming from. It's a good thing. The heart's in the right place, right? But if you want to use a food-derived, food-certified color for color in a cosmetic, it's illegal in the U.S. Because it's not a pre-approved on the list of synthetic dyes that they say, here, you can use one of these. You can use it for color in a smoothie. You cannot use it for color in a cosmetic. That same beetroot powder. Make that make sense. Right. We have to grandfather in as quickly as possible these beetroot powders, et cetera, that we can use in lip products today. They're highly pigmented as a color. Now, this is the weird bit. If I say I'm using it as an extract for antioxidants, legal. I can use it. But just I can't say it's the thing that's coloring it. So besides Yom Beauty, what other brands do you think are doing it right, totally safe, this is okay to use? I don't. I don't know of any brand that does cosmetic grade and food grade certified. together for a full complete formula. I'm not saying that there aren't safer and there aren't brands that have really high integrity that use only food derived ingredients, which is different, right? Food derived means you've taken it from a food, but here's the difference. And a lot of people don't know this. When you say it's cosmetic grade and you say something is food grade, it's not just about where it comes from or how it's, it's how it's processed. It's how it's stored. It's how, it's how it's made. It's whether or not there's a certain level of cleanliness or a good manufacturing processes when it's on a line. So if I make a cosmetic grade ingredient, it has a different manufacturing standard to when I'm saying it's a food grade ingredient, right? Right. So the chemicals that are used to extract or, you know, commercialize that product are going to be different in a food grade product. That's why food grade certified for me, if it's going on my mouth is so important. So it's not just derived from beet or it's not just derived from coconut or derived from, you know, beeswax. It's, it's, it's also that it's processed in a food grade manner, which is a level of purity. This episode is fun because it's like breaking beauty news. I mean, this is just massive. Where can people follow along to see? We are launching Yom Beauty as the proof of concept that we can do this food grade certified and cosmetic grade certified. We're launching on yombeauty.com and that's Y-O-M because it's yum. It's like, it's so yum. It's yum. We needed like a new standard for it. So you can go to yombeauty.com and that is for the actual product. And if you want to follow along on what we're going to be doing with regulations as a, as a founder of the Lip Service Alliance, you can follow me on Instagram. It's simple meet as in, hi, nice to meet you. Uh, Laura, uh, DG, that's my, my last name is so long. So it's just D-I-G-I L-A-U-R-A D-I-G-I. And the Lip Service Alliance will have its own website. And I intentionally did not fully form that right now because I wanted it to be an open invitation for all the brands to join. So like the board of directors and the, you know, the brands that are founding partners, it's still an open invitation. I didn't want to just create this organization and close the doors and go, well, you know, I want people to join as quickly as possible. So I'm hoping that the L'Oreal's of the world, I'm hoping that the Laneige's of the world, I'm hoping that Rhodes, you know, calls me up and says, oh, we didn't see this. We'd like to join. And we'd like to figure out how to shift this as quickly as possible. Because the truth is no matter where you are in the world, it's not just a U.S. thing. It's not just an E.U. thing. It's not just a China thing. It's not just, I mean, it's global. We are classing lip products as topicals. And we should at this point in history, we should know better. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be? It would be, and I'm speaking from experience because I went through a very harrowing health scare. We are inundated with fear today. You wake up afraid. You go to sleep afraid. You look at your socials. You get afraid. You go to, you're in the car. You're afraid. We are a fear-based culture. And what I can tell you is that's a very low frequency to be in. And anytime you make a decision, just stop and ask yourself, are you making this decision out of fear? Are you making this decision out of fear? Because a hundred times out of a hundred times, I can guarantee you that decision is the wrong one. If you make any decision in any part of your day out of fear, including choosing your lip products, then you're making the wrong decision. You have to make it from a very positive, courageous, I don't want to say fearless, but don't do something- It's more informed. There's a difference between being informed and being fearful. Yeah. So don't be afraid. There's nothing, like even in setting, this whole thing in motion, it is very ambitious to say to the whole beauty industry, we got this wrong. And we have to change this overnight because we are finding things in lip products. That is, to the average person, that would be like, okay, I'd rather not spend my time after I've been sick for four years, spending my time doing that. It can be scary, but you have to go, is it the right thing? Is this the right thing to do? I think everyone can agree. This is the right thing to do. And we have to be courageous and come at it from a much higher vibration. So no fear. Don't make any decisions based on fear. And if you feel the fear, work through it, get rid of it, and then make your decision. Loved this episode. Was on the edge of my seat the entire time you flew all the way here from the UK to do the show, which is so incredible. So guys, just gas her up in the comments. It one of the first shows that you're sharing this? You are literally, the first one that I did was because I was in LA and it's a dear friend of mine and he's amazing. Darren Olean. I don't know if you know Darren. Oh yes, love Darren. Darren, I love Darren. I need to get Darren on the show. Oh my God, you should. He's amazing. He's never been on the show. You have to get- I need to tell him. I will tell him. And he was amazing. And all I can say is I appreciate you so much because when I watch your podcast and I see what you're doing, you are fearless. Thank you. You are fearless. And that's when I say don't make any decisions based on fear. I wasn't talking to you. You definitely don't do that. And I want to thank every person who's listening, who will find me, follow me, support me, because the more people I have behind me, the less anyone will try to intimidate me to stop. Yeah. That's the most important. Let's all band together and say we deserve better. Our kids deserve better. Moms deserve better. Women deserve better. Yep. That's right. Laura, this was a dynamite interview. Thank you so much for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thank you so much. I love that Laura emphasized that the takeaway from this episode should be awareness, not panic. Would love to know what you thought about this episode. Don't forget to leave a five-star review and continue the conversation on the Keepservatives Facebook group. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.