My preference is that you would never go shopping for any skin-care product without the research and analysis from me and my team about its long-term benefit for your skin. After all, discussing and debating whether a product is organic sidesteps other essential issues, like the need for sun protection, and the skin’s need for antioxidants, skin-identical ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients, even if many of the most stable and most “bio-available” of these are synthetically derived from natural sources. And that’s not to mention providing help for exfoliation, fighting acne, rosacea, skin discoloration, and yes, even wrinkles. The entire discussion about organic ignores the need for great skin-care products. Meanwhile the research shows pretty clearly that when the world of synthetic cosmetic ingredients is combined with natural ones that work and don’t irritate the skin, you are in the right place to take the best possible care of your skin.
You also need to be aware that there is no substantiated, published research anywhere proving that organic ingredients are superior to nonorganic or synthetic ingredients. Choosing organic is not essential, but it is a preference many consumers have.
If organic is the only way you are willing to go, and until formal standards are available in the United States and the rest of the world, the best approach is to buy products certified by the USDA or Ecocert or one of its related groups. These aren’t perfect systems, but when a product bears one of these organization’s seals it gives you an honestly transparent way to decipher just how natural and organic the product you’re considering is.
As burgeoning groups work to solidify organic standards that can be followed globally, shopping by seal and also by the company’s reputation for integrity is the best consumers can do. Of course, unless your attitude is organic-or-nothing, there is every reason to completely ignore any claims of that nature (pun intended) and instead focus on finding the products with ingredients that copious research has shown are truly beneficial for your skin. If some of those products happen to contain organically certified ingredients, great. But if not, consumers don’t need to lose sleep over missing out on this segment of the worldwide movement to go Green.