A greater understanding?

Many years ago I had a house mate who was dismayed at putting on weight in spite of treating herself to a nice piece of cake most afternoons. One day she decided she was going to make a cake. She had never made one before and so this was quite a big deal. A few hours later I returned home and asked her how the cake had turned out. She immediately began exclaiming how she couldn't believe how much butter and sugar went into making it and vowed to never eat cake again.

Having watched my mother bake and cook from an early age, I grew up understanding what went into most meals, even if I had no concept of calories, fat and sugar when I was little. I was therefore, quite surprised that my friend had reached her late twenties or early thirties with no concept of what she was eating.

Now, I'm not saying this from a purer-than-snow soap box because I consume my fair share of cake, cream, chocolate, butter, sugar and alcohol.  I could also exercise more and live a much, much more responsible life. However, we humans have an uncanny way of conveniently ignoring things if they are not what we want to be true. We ignore how it is that a t-shirt can cost less than £2 because why wouldn't you snap up a bargain, or convince ourselves that we'll give up smoking next week because I'm OK at the moment and a few more really can't hurt. Can it? As for that second (or third) glass of wine....

I began this blog because I wanted to take time out and be more creative. I also wanted to appreciate the hand-made when so much in modern society is mass produced. I suppose I wanted to have an element of my life that was 'slower' and also to have an appreciation of the things around me that I had perhaps taken for granted. There is, of course, also the pure satisfaction of having something that you have made yourself.

Earlier this year I have, for the first time, attempted to turn my hand to making, for want of a better phrase, beauty products. I'm now adept at cooking, making clothes, household objects and decorations but had no idea what makes up the products I tend to slather on myself. If skin is our biggest organ and has the ability to absorb, should I not be as keen to understand what I put on my body as what I put in it?

After buying a magazine I turned my hand to making a foot balm and also a body 'butter'. However, the body butter recipe in the magazine listed an 'emulsifying wax' as one of the essential ingredients and, after reading more about this and what they are typically made from, I decided to find a recipe that didn't use this. Essentially, its a wax or fat that has the ability to bind together oil and water in a pleasingly creamy way. I'm sure it does other stuff too.

In making this emulsifying wax-free product it swiftly became apparent that I was not going to get a body butter that resembled anything that you can buy in the shops. So, in using my homemade body butter am therefore placing oil on my skin as a moisturiser as opposed to a lighter mixture of oil and water. Does this matter? If the oil is the moisturising bit, why would you want to water it down? Or does adding water to the oil make it easier to absorb and so am I short-changing myself?

Still curious, I decided to sign up to a course that would teach me how to make oils, ointments and creams. If I wasn't getting the knowledge I sought from a magazine, why not learn from someone who makes these things for a living and have the opportunity for a two-way conversation that is not possible from magazines, books or the Internet? And I suppose this is where I had the equivalent of my house mate's cake moment. 

Now, I'm not a chemist - and if my former Chemistry teacher is reading this, he will readily vouch for me on this front - and I did only attend a very informal workshop that lasted a few hours, but at a very superficial level I learned that most emulsifying waxes are made from Polyethylene Glycol or PEG and, depending on their exact make up, may or may not be something you want to be applying to your body's largest organ.

At the workshop, we had the option of using a vegetable-based emulsifying wax. Although entirely natural, it didn't produce a cream that was as thick and luxurious as the cream produced by using the PEG alternative. I guess this is why cosmetics companies continue to use PEG products, even those that are studiously avoiding using SLSs, parabens and all those other chemicals that some shampoo and shower gel bottles now gladly state that they are free from. This is not to say that the beauty industry isn't heavily regulated and, in theory, the products you buy in the shops are perfectly safe. However, so are the cakes you buy at the bakery, supermarket or farmer's market but that does not mean that you should eat them in large quantities or shouldn't intersperse them with time and plenty of vegetables, salad, fruit and pulses.

Does this mean I'll never use a product containing a PEG from now on? No, it doesn't. In the same way I will still eat cake and drink alcohol in moderation and, inevitably, buy some clothes without thinking of the conditions the people who made them were working under. However, I'm glad I have a slightly better understanding of what goes into beauty products and will be more careful in my purchases in the future.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed and an informed choice is always better than an uninformed choice. I'm just grateful that I have a choice at all.

An oil, an ointment and a cream...

My PEG-free face cream