The Clean beauty movement has been on fire and with good reason. Nearly all of the skincare products we find on the shelves are layered with ingredients that our great grandparents have never seen before and we’re over it. It’s time for some natural products to grace our skin because what we’re using is determining what our skin feels + looks like now, and will inevitably set the course for how our skin will look + feel years from now, and that’s kind of important. Why? Our skin is the largest organ on our body, which only heightens the importance of why we need to do all the things to take care of it, but what does that look like?

We’ll Tell You What It Doesn’t Look Like
From parabens, phthalates, and sulfates to oxybenzone, triclosan, hydroquinone, and artificial fragrances, you can find all of these nasty ingredients and more in your skincare products. Is your head hurting from trying to read all of those harsh words, yet? Because ours is. All of these ingredients can be found in your makeup, nail polish, sunscreen, shampoos + conditioners, hair dyes, and the list goes on. We are sure some of you have experienced irritations from certain products, and what do we do? We throw it away and move onto something marked “sensitive skin,” which fixes the short-term effects, but what are these products doing to us long term? 

“Products are tested to make sure they don’t cause short-term problems, such as skin irritation. But they’re not tested for long-term safety,” says Dr. Kathryn M. Rexrode, associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School. The FDA only steps in when someone has made a claim against a product stating that it has caused damage, but other than that, the purity of a product is left to the hands of a money-hungry industry that doesn’t really care about the long term effects for us. It’s pretty upsetting, right? Well, let’s do something about it. How? Let’s take baby steps and then let’s take a plunge.

The Baby Steps
Obviously we all can’t afford to just throw away everything in our bathroom because so and so said so, but what we can do is start looking at the ingredients in the products that stay on our skin the longest. Body lotions, face lotion, body oils, face serums, primers, sunscreen, + makeup all seep into our skin and are there all day long. When you use products that aren’t natural, they have the potential to deplete your skin from its natural state, fill your body with harmful toxins, speed up aging, and some body lotions can even be the cause of weight gain because it’s interfering with your hormone production. So what do you do? Look at the ingredients. If you see any of the nasty words listed above in your products, start looking for an alternative.

Some alternatives for clean skincare are Primally Pure for facial cleansers, ILIA Makeup, The Organic Pharmacy for sunscreen and other options, + The Honest Company for body lotions, and for a list of Goops 2021 list of non-toxic favorites, check their picks out here.

Once you’ve found a clean alternative to the products that stay on your skin the longest, start throwing away the old products that have harmful toxins in them, and when you’re ready, start looking at other daily habits + products that are used on your skin, hair, and nails.

Take the Plunge
Taking the plunge could mean a lot of things, but really, we just want you to keep choosing better products that will help you step into a new you and start creating new daily habits that will benefit you, your future, and your skin. What daily, weekly, and monthly habits can you start incorporating? What shampoo + conditioner do you use? What about your soap, shaving cream, and nail polish? We have a snazzy new brand that you might have heard of called freecoat nails. What is it? It’s a non-toxic beauty bar that focuses on providing people with non-toxic options. They also have an organic sugar scrub that is made in-house + it feels like pure goodness on your skin (no lie). There aren’t too many non-toxic beauty bars out there, but we’re trying to change that so we can create the new norm.

Another change you should start to think about is your hair dye. If you dye your hair on your own or get it done professionally, you’re exposing yourself to 5,000 different chemicals including some known to disrupt the body’s natural hormone balance or to have cancer-causing effects in animals, according to studies. A study was published online on Dec. 3, 2019, by the International Journal of Cancer, which states that they found a link between hair dye and breast cancer. “Women in the study who used permanent hair dye at least once in the 12-month period leading up to the study had a 9% higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who didn’t use hair dye. And when the study authors broke the findings down by race, they found an even higher risk for African American women. Women in that group who used any permanent dye in the previous 12 months had a 45% higher risk of developing breast cancer compared with women who did not use hair dye. It didn’t seem to matter how often or for how many years the women had used the dye,” states Harvard Health Publishing.

Clean Beauty, It’s a Way of Life
There are so many different things you can do in order to incorporate new daily habits that will lead to a healthier you and a healthier future, but it’s all about what works for you. If you’ve found new, healthier + clean habits that work for you, what are they? If you use non-toxic skincare or hair products that you love, what are they? Leave it in the comments for our readers so we can all grow in this Clean Beauty movement together, because it shouldn’t be a movement, it should be a way of life, and we’re ready to live it. 

Glyphosate. What the heck is it and why do you need to stay away from it? Let’s talk about it for a hot minute, because it’s dirty, it’s disgusting, and it does not get our juices flowing.

According to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), “glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that can kill certain weeds and grasses. Glyphosate works by blocking an enzyme essential for plant growth. The product is used primarily in agriculture, but also in forestry and lawn and garden care,” and you want to know where else it can be found? In our food. Yep, you read that right, and it gets worse. The FDA also states that “certain trace amounts of pesticides, or pesticide chemical residues, may remain in or on some crops after they’re harvested. The FDA’s role is to ensure that pesticide chemical residues on or in domestic and imported foods do not exceed the limits established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” which means that as long as there isn’t “too much” glyphosate found in our food, then it is deemed “safe.” We don’t know about you, but we don’t want to ingest anything that has any amount of pesticides on or in it.

Save the bees. Save the humans.
The thing is, glyphosate isn’t just found in our lettuce or veggies, it’s also in our chips, meat, wheat, and it’s affecting the biomes of insects like bees, causing massive numbers of bees to die off and causing devastating effects to earthworms and biodiversity overall. Think about it, if it’s affecting these insects that live in pretty rough environments and can adapt quickly to changes, just imagine the type of damage it could do to your body that isn’t exposed to half of the things they are. We don’t only need to save the bees, we need to save ourselves from the pesticides that are finding their way into our homes- our bodies.

The C-word
If it wasn’t bad enough knowing that pesticides are in our food, it gets even worse. Glyphosate is also known to be a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. There have been several lawsuits against products like RoundUp for being the cause of cancer, which is one of the commonly used pesticides for farmers where nonorganic food is grown. Did you catch that? Not only are there pesticides in our food, but these pesticides are a common cause of cancer. Umm, how do we stay away from all things Glyphosate?

Choose organic
The EWG published a report on August 15th, 2018, which showed that 43 of 45 samples of products made with conventionally grown oats indicated that glyphosate was present. I know what you’re thinking… How am I supposed to eat anything that doesn’t have glyphosate in it?

Easy. Choose organic. 

Clean Juice has made it incredibly easy for everyone who walks through our doors. How? Because literally every product that is used in our stores is USDA certified organic and you never have to wonder where your food comes from, if there are any added sugars or additives, and you literally get to watch your food being made right in front of you. Does it get any more transparent than that? We don’t think so. 

But why organic?
When you stray away from organic food, you run into other labels using glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, which means that crops are harvested shortly after they are sprayed and long before the chemical can be broken down. Ok, what does that mean? When crops are harvested shortly after being sprayed, glyphosate is present at high levels in many common food crops, and these crops are often labeled as ‘natural’ and non-GMO, which triggers our brain to think it’s ‘healthy,’ but it isn’t. Scary, right? We know!

Some researchers have even raised concerns about the nutritional quality of food crops being reduced by the use of glyphosate, which is another reason to choose organic. Organic soybeans have been found to have higher nutritional value than genetically modified soybeans, and that’s not the only food that holds higher nutritional value when it isn’t genetically modified.

So, what are we saying??
We’re saying to eat Clean Juice morning, lunch, and dinner and choose all organic food when you’re grocery shopping. When you choose organic, you’re choosing foods that hold all of their nutritional value, aren’t loaded with extra preservatives or additives, and will leave you feeling clean, energized, and 100% yourself. At Clean Juice, all of our ingredients are USDA organic certified and they taste insanely delicious. We have locations all around the U.S. and you can even have your own Clean Juice in your back pocket when you download our app. We choose you, so choose us too and let’s save the bees, the planet, and ourselves.

Organic agriculture means using cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biological diversity.

Since the beginning, organic agriculture has been based on the principle of sustainability. This means that many farmers add organic matter, soil microbes, and soil invertebrates that will naturally increase over time and create rich healthy soil that will help their crops better fight off drought, diseases, and insects. No need for harmful pesticides!

NO HARMFUL PESTICIDES, NO PROBLEMS

There are a few other ways farmers protect against pests and diseases while avoiding harmful pesticides. Having a well-designed and healthy organic system that will naturally have fewer pest problems (by using crop rotation, intercropping, or resistant varieties) is their first go-to move. If pests are still a problem, their second line of defense is to use mechanical and physical practices (like burning crop residues, mulching, introducing insect predators) and non-synthetic/natural materials. The final line of defense against pest control is to use biologicals and botanicals to control pests.

Biologicals and botanicals are pesticides derived from natural materials or living organisms and are allowed in organic production as long as they do not contain synthetic additives or are not prohibited on the national list of unapproved pesticides. Think compounds derived from plants with unique bug-repelling properties, minerals (like sulfur, copper, clay), and pheromones.

BETTER FOR YOU & YOUR HEALTH

Not only are USDA-certified organic fruits & veggies better for the environment, they may also have a higher nutrient content than conventional produce!

With no harmful pesticides or fertilizers, plants boost their own natural production of phytochemicals in order to strengthen their resistance to bugs and weeds. Why does that matter? Because phytochemicals are the vitamins & antioxidants that our body needs!

The harmful pesticides and chemicals used on most conventional produce are extremely toxic and poisonous to the body. Long-term harmful pesticide exposure can have very serious and negative effects on our health! When you eat organic, you are reducing your risk of developing health problems and you’re also filling your body with the best, most nutritious food possible.

You can rest assured knowing that everything on our menu is USDA-certified organic and designed to give your body something truly healthy.