How can I tell if my product contains natural or synthetic colors? Episode 128

Perry Romanoski (0:00)

Hi, this is Perry, and you're listening to The Beauty Brains, where real scientists answer your beauty questions for Tuesday, February 11th, 2014

Hello, and welcome to The Beauty Brains. I'm your host, Perry Romanoski, and with me as always, Randy Schueler. Hello, Randy.

Randy Schueler (0:27)

Hello, Perry, and everybody listening.

Perry Romanoski (0:29)

Hey, you know, I was reading Twitter as I am want to do. Actually, for the listeners out there, feel free to follow us on Twitter.

Randy Schueler (0:37)

It's the Beauty Brains. Yeah, join the, what, 12,000 other people who are followers.

Perry Romanoski (0:43)

There are a lot of followers. I wonder how many people actually follow. I mean, there's so many people, you know, that follow thousands of people. I don't know how they follow any. I follow, we follow, what, 150 people?

Randy Schueler (0:54)

Yeah, something like that, yeah.

Perry Romanoski (0:56)

It's pretty hard to keep up with everybody.

Randy Schueler (0:59)

It is, it is.

It's like dipping your toe into the river, you know? You just can't keep up with everything that flows past you in Twitter.

Perry Romanoski (1:07)

Indeed, indeed. Did you see the big news, though, on Twitter?

Though, like, this came through my Twitter feed. It wasn't about Twitter, but you see the big news?

Randy Schueler (1:15)

Oh, what's that?

Perry Romanoski (1:16)

That J&J finally announced that they reformulated their baby shampoo and removed the objectionable preservative for a whole new formulation.

Randy Schueler (1:28)

That was the big headline about no more formaldehyde. Although, I mean, to be technically correct, it's a formaldehyde donor, but...

Perry Romanoski (1:34)

Well, exactly.

But they swapped their formula with a new preservative system, and I think when they did that, that changed the color, so they had to change the color, and it changed the thickness, so they had to put in a new thickener, and so that... Whenever you tinker with these formulas, you know...

Randy Schueler (1:55)

That can kind of have a cascading effect, you know. It's rare that you can just unplug one ingredient from the formula and plug another one directly in.

Perry Romanoski (2:04)

Yeah, I hope they don't run into, like, the problem that New Coke ran into, right? Where they take, like, an iconic brand, they change it, and I don't know if anybody will continue using it.

Randy Schueler (2:17)

Right, well, we'll see. We should track the sales of G&J's Baby Shampoo.

Perry Romanoski (2:21)

Although, whenever they make changes in cosmetics, like something like that, they often have the mandate to make it exactly the same. So change it, but make it exactly the same.

Randy Schueler (2:32)

Well, or at least that, you know, close enough that consumer testing shows that there isn't a significant difference.

Perry Romanoski (2:39)

So that's G&J, kowtowing to the radical NGOs, if you ask me. But, you know, is it kowtowing?

Randy Schueler (2:50)

I just like the sound of that. I think that term does not get used often enough.

Perry Romanoski (2:54)

It really doesn't. Speaking of not used often enough, today we're getting close to Valentine's Day, aren't we?

Randy Schueler (3:00)

Actually, that's a great segue in today's edition of Beauty Science News. So, this week on Beauty Science News, we have a story that sort of combines beauty science and St. Valentine's Day, which is perfect since that's coming up on, what is that, Friday?

Perry Romanoski (3:20)

I think it is Friday, yeah.

Randy Schueler (3:22)

Yeah, so I like to call this piece the deadly danger of Valentine's Day.

Perry Romanoski (3:28)

You're such a romantic.

Randy Schueler (3:31)

Dramatic romantic. So, I'll put the link in the show notes as I want to do, but just to quickly recap it, the article is about food allergies, which I had never really given much thought to, although I'm actually allergic to raw onions, so I guess I should pay attention to this. But apparently, over 30,000 people a year end up in the emergency room due to food allergies.

I would not have guessed the number was that high. And a professor out of the University of California, Dr. Suzanne Tuber, conducted a study, and I guess she looked at about 400 of these studies of these patients with food allergies.

Perry Romanoski (4:11)

I wonder if she likes potatoes.

Randy Schueler (4:15)

Because Tuber? Oh, that's good. I'll say it right now, I'm gonna cut that out, okay?

So anyway, so Dr. Tuber found that 5% of these patients with food allergies had an allergic reaction after kissing someone who had eaten a food to which they were allergic. So they didn't even consume the food, they just kissed a person who had eaten the food.