Gaia
Organics have, under the auspices of and as the independent funding
arm of the Gaia Research Institute, been providing it’s own
natural personal care products to South African and international
clientele for nearly two decades. In recent years however, some
competitors with little or no history, experience or expertise,
have engaged in ignorant armchair public criticism of ingredients
used by other role-players, including Gaia Organics, not on any
merit, but as cheap, cowardly marketing ploys to enter a traditionally
tranquil market with a big splash, a very effective and lucrative
marketing strategy started by Neways, a US multi-level internet
marketing company.
Local copycats, using Biophile magazine,
pamphlets, forums and their websites, reluctant to forgo such harmful
practices, continue to put profit before truth by deliberately disseminating
fraudulent misinformation relating to crucial safety aspects of
the ingredients of others. Gaia Research has completely rebutted
such criticisms in writing. See “The
Biofilth Files: Have You Been Enchantricked?” &
“The
Essential Organic Skincare Files: Are You And Your Toddlers Truly
Naturebabes?” Gaia have uncovered a fraudulent misrepresentation,
miscontextualisation and even outright false fabrication of misinformation,
not only maligning the target ingredients of others, but also in
the portrayal of ‘suspect’ ingredients used by the culprits
themselves, that are not fully listed or are falsely portrayed.
It is truly ironic that the most innocuous (safest)
ingredients comprising the base formulation or inert components
of some Gaia Organics products are the ones that have been criticised
as being unsafe, but this actually reveals the Neways plot, which
deliberately targets the common denominators in most personal care
products so as to cast as wide a net of malicious aspersions as
possible. A further irony is that the culprits have had to compromise
on the safety and efficacy of their own products, by using poor
alternatives to the completely safe and efficacious common denominator
ingredients that they have targeted, namely entirely natural mineral
oil; quasi-natural sodium lauryl ether sulphate and nature-identical
parabens. Alternatives to these ingredients, which are perfectly
safe when used correctly in pure form, are several orders of magnitude
more hazardous than those they replace.
I have touched on some of these issues in our this
catalogue and in depth on our website and invite you to evaluate
for yourself the strength of the genuine superiority of our ingredients
and products over that of the scaremongers, whose only advantage
are their lies and false claims to safety and superiority by supposedly
being ‘all natural’
and ‘organic’; great sounding ideals, but the
reality is that such products
could only either still be living in nature or, having been removed,
are decomposing, since that is what happens to previously living
things – when not ‘unnaturally preserved by human ingenuity’.
At best, the life force ebbs away and at worst, toxic molecules
are produced that really are undesirable. The term ‘natural
preservative’ is an oxymoron. If it were truly natural,
it would decompose and cease to be, which is exactly what happens
to the traces of nature identical Parabens used
to preserve our Aqueous Cream.
Not listed in the catalogue
entries are the constituent ingredients of the Aqueous Cream,
which like other complex ingredients, is listed as the complex.
However, because the once standard British Pharmacopoeia Ung
Emulcificans Aqueosum (UEA) formula is modified to meet our
needs as entirely suitable for leave-on applications, Gaia Organics,
in the interests of total transparency, shall proportionally list
all the individual constituents: 1) water; 2) mineral gel; 3) cetyl
stearyl alcohol; 4) mineral oil; 5) sodium lauryl sulphate; 6) methyl
paraben and 7) propyl paraben. Items 2&4
are fractionally distilled to purity from crude oil, the richest
and purest natural organic repository on Earth; 3&5 are synthesised
from coconut oil and 6&7 from gum benzoin and are nature-identical
to those found Royal Bee Jelly
and several plants and are used in traces just
sufficient to maintain the integrity of the base cream long enough
to complete product formulation, when colloidal silver
and essential oils assume ultimate duty in the cream products. No
parabens are used in non-cream products (those not listed as containing
aqueous cream), which being water-based, which non-cream, but rather
water-based products, are manufactured individually from start to
finish, rather than from a common base.
Regular UEA contains too much Sodium lauryl sulphate, not only
as a formulating emulsifier, but also to increase utility as a soap-free
cleansing emulsion cream. It is also generally inappropriately preserved
for leave-on purposes, traditionally with chlorocresol, but now
more frequently with phenoxyethanol, which latter has spoilt a long
and impressive widespread-use history of suitability for even troubled
skin conditions such as eczema and (radiation) burns. We stand by
our UEA as superior to ‘natural’ water & plant oil
emulsions in terms of quality, safety and efficacy for our purpose
of a stable “inert” spreading cream for our biological
actives in such products. See
Why is Gaia Aqueous Cream safe? We again challenge the opposition
to provide a full listing of their ingredients and “sub-ingredients”
as we have done. We really are proud of ours, they apparently not
of theirs, as witnessed by only partial, and or vague listings of
selected hype ingredients.
The order of ‘potential toxicity’ of
Gaia ingredients from highest to lowest risk are: fixed
& volatile (essential) plant oils (long and short term respectively);
anti-oxidative vitamins; herbal extracts; synthesised coconut oil
ingredients; nutrients/co-factors; kelp; fruit acids; crude oil
sourced petroleum inerts (mineral oil and wax); titanium and zinc
oxides; colloidal silver; & parabenzoate preservatives (this
end of the list being the safest). Please see our “Consumer
Awareness” archive.
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