Episode 391 - Beef tallow, humectants, smoke and more

Valerie George (0:00)

Hi, I'm Valerie, and you're listening to The Beauty Brains. Welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider look at the cosmetics industry. This is episode 391 I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:26)

Hello Valerie, good to see you as always.

Valerie George (0:29)

Great to see you. We have a lot of great questions today on today's show, including, does beef tallow do anything for your skin? Can you address the effects of secondhand smoke on skin and hair? What should you consider when picking humectants? Why are cheap conditioners so thin? And what does it mean for a fatty acid to swell? But first, our famous inane chit-chat.

Perry Romanowski (0:54)

Well Valerie, it's been a little while since I've seen you. What do you got going? Anything fun going on?

Valerie George (0:59)

Well, some people would say, oh, I fell off the planet, but I actually fell off a ladder. That's what happened.

Perry Romanowski (1:05)

What?

Valerie George (1:05)

Yeah, I did.

Perry Romanowski (1:07)

What happened?

Valerie George (1:08)

You were painting or something? Everyone says, well, what were you doing on a ladder? And it was obviously climbing to reach something.

Perry Romanowski (1:16)

Sure, sure.

Valerie George (1:18)

But anyway, so yeah, it wasn't crazy high. It was like a handful of feet off the ground, high enough, and I fell on cement and it hurt. I thought I broke my leg, but I didn't, thank goodness.

Perry Romanowski (1:30)

Wow, wow.

Valerie George (1:31)

And I had some really ugly bruises, but I'm doing okay now.

Perry Romanowski (1:36)

You should hire people to get on ladders for you.

Valerie George (1:39)

Well, Mr. Cosmetic Chemist told me not to use this specific one, and I was like, whatever, I use it all the time when he's not around. And of course, he was there when it happened. It's like, why didn't it happen when he was like turned around or something?

Perry Romanowski (1:55)

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Well, I'm glad you're okay. It hasn't disrupted things too much.

Valerie George (2:03)

No, everything's good.

Perry Romanowski (2:05)

You know what I've got going on?

Valerie George (2:07)

What?

Perry Romanowski (2:08)

I'm heading out to China.

Valerie George (2:10)

Wow, you're going back.

Perry Romanowski (2:12)

What for? I'm speaking at a conference out there about the future of cosmetic formulating, so I spent a lot of time putting together my presentation. You know, it takes a long time to put together presentations, even though you're only talking like 30 minutes. So, I don't know, maybe I spent too much time on it. I don't know.

Valerie George (2:30)

Well, no, it does take a lot of work to prepare for these things, because you want to make sure you articulate all your points, your slides have what they need, don't have what they don't need. Yeah, I think it's really hard.

Perry Romanowski (2:42)

Probably for a 30-minute talk, right, it takes me, I don't know, 20 hours. Which is, you know, why?

Valerie George (2:50)

Okay, that's kind of a long time.

Perry Romanowski (2:52)

Yeah, I guess I'm too nitpicky. Well, I'm looking forward to going to China. I just hope I can get back in the country. I don't want to come back.

Valerie George (2:59)

Well, I'd like for you to come back as well, so we can keep up on our episodes of the show.

Perry Romanowski (3:04)

Yeah, speaking of episodes, why don't we head to Beauty News? Valerie, I don't know if this has happened to you, but I have a Google alert whenever the word cosmetic chemist is published on the Internet.

Valerie George (3:21)

Okay.

Perry Romanowski (3:22)

And so, I get these daily alerts, and it says the article and the link to that. And so, I've been getting a ton of links with all of these new cosmetic chemists that I've never heard of before. And these articles, too, are kind of weird. Like, here's an article, the title was, the 68-year-old's spring skin routine that made sagging skin 43% firmer. Right? I mean, who's going to notice 43%? Like, why would they do that?

Valerie George (3:54)

Oh, my gosh. Did they get that out of a journal or something?

Perry Romanowski (3:56)

Right. No, and then they had, the next one was, this 47-year-old's skin became 42% firmer. And so, I go and I look at this, and this is a thing called journeymondelet.com, and I'm reading through these articles, and I figured out what is going on here. These are all AI-generated stuff.