My go-to drink is a mojito, or a nice fatty alcohol. What’s yours?

Ah, you make a fantastic point. That made absolutely no sense…

You’ve glanced at the back of your cleanser bottle or your little moisturizer tub, you’ll be familiar with the fleeting interest and fundamentally overcomplicated terminology for ingredients. In this edition of ingredients insight, we’ll look into the alcohols included in your products, debunking the myth that all alcohols are bad and giving you a list of alcohols to look out for and avoid. To give it a Botanic Pretti5 touch, we’ll do a case study of our very own Antioxidant Hydrating Toning Essence!

The fatty, moisturizing alcohols in Botanic Pretti5 toning essence:

Photo by Mathilde Langevin on Unsplash

Butylene glycol. A type of alcohol you get from distilling corn, but its role in cosmetics is to act as a conditioning agent. Marked by a viscosity-decreasing characteristic this ingredient is often found in gel-like products that seem to glide with ease against your skin.

Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates. This plant-derived or synthetic is a combination of alcohols derived by hydrogenating corn syrup. It’s -OH laden chemical structure makes it a magnet for water, bringing moisture into the skin while also enhancing the viscosity of the product. Definitely not one of the nasty water expelling alcohols.

Panthenol. This alcohol form of the vitalizing vitamin B5 is one of the more versatile ingredients. Like the other fatty alcohols mentioned, it’s an effective skin moisturizer, but going above and beyond it binds and increases the efficacy of other moisturizing ingredients in the products.

Takeaway! Contrary to the myth that all alcohols dry out your skin, one of the main reasons that we include these fatty alcohols is to help plump up the skin with moisture.

The drying, irritating alcohols not in Botanic Pretti5 toning essence:

Photo by Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash

Ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, alcohol denat, and ethanol are a small sampling of the nasty drying alcohols that we never use in our products. When companies claim that their products are alcohol free, they tend to refer to these drying alcohols.

But full disclosure, now you know that there are in fact alcohols in your products. Rest assured, Botanic Pretti5 includes fatty moisturizing alcohols, there to boost skin moisture and product texture!

Written by Joy Chan