Why Are The First 5 Ingredients So Important?

Ingredients are what make your hair products work effectively. Of course how you apply them is just as important but you can apply the best ways possible and still cause damage if what’s in the bottle is crap in the first place.

It is sometimes confusing about what your hair needs, couple that with deceptive marketing and you can be confused at best and disillusioned at worst.

Not every company is trying to deceive you but they do what you to buy their product so they use tactics such as pretty packaging, key words we gravitate to (natural, organic etc.) and even natural hair stars we follow. It can be overwhelming to some if you do not know what to look for in a product.

Product junkies are the worst at this because they are in love with the hunt for the newest, latest and the greatest. They thrive off of the packaging, the claims and the key words but if they are not turning that bottle around and checking the first five ingredients then they are doing themselves a massive disservice.

As a matter of fact anyone who does not turn the bottle around will be doing themselves a disservice because the meat and potatoes are at the top of that product.

Manufacturers will say what is in your product but they never actually say how much? Not so much. They love to pull out those ingredients our eyes and brains have been trained to hone in on like Shea Butter*, Olive oil*, or Argan oil* but if you are not looking at the ingredient list you wont know how much of the good stuff is in there.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires skin and hair care products ingredients be listed in the order of highest to lowest concentration.

Ingredient labeling became a “fact of life” for the cosmetic industry in the early 1970’s so the consumer could make informed decisions and to alert consumers who has allergies to certain ingredients. It was ground-breaking during it’s time but many of us have overlooked this highly precious requirement in recent years.

First of all the vast majority of cosmetic products are water-based. This is why you can really go by the first six ingredients if water is the first one. This includes:

Emulsions – oils* mixed with water like hair conditioners

Surfctants- cleansers

In those products, water will be the first or close to the first and the next 4 or 5 will be the functional portion of the product. They are the real cleaners or the conditioners of that product that will ultimately do the hard work to keep your hair clean, conditioned, and/or healthy. Where are the other ingredients that are in the list or plastered on the front to get your attention?

They make up typically less than 1% of the total in the product. Surprised? Yes, I can see why you would be but that truly makes you want to check the back of the bottle now for sure.

Now, not all the less then 1% are useless. Extremely important ingredients like preservatives are used at a few tenths of percent, yet buying or using a product without them is a no-no. We want our products to last so those are important as well.

Couple that will the low level needed for pigments and you can see how sometimes the 5 (or 6) first ingredients rule has exceptions. Despite those few exceptions, many items that are brightly lit up on the front of your product but towards the bottom of the list just lets you know there is not much of it in there to even make a difference or a benefit to your tresses.

Now, we gravitate to those ingredients that we love but do not pass up on the best moisturizer in the world…water! Any shampoo, conditioner or leave-in worth it’s salt better have water as the first ingredient and according to The Natural Haven, water generally takes up 50%- 80% of the total weight of the product.

Now, we are not trying to make you dump all of your tried and true products in the trash if they do not follow these rules. This is just a guide to keep you on the right track of being an informed consumer and using the products you want to use instead of the ones you THINK you are using.

Checking the ingredients is key online as well so even if you are buying from Amazon.com for a product you may need to head over to the main site of the product to check out the ingredients.

Any product that shys away from sharing the list (and not just the key ingredients list. You want to see the WHOLE list) you may want to stay clear of because if they cannot share with you what is in their product then do you really want to share your money with them? Probably not!