An Ingredient Deck or Ingredient Panel is a term that refers to the listing of ingredients on a product label. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has certain labeling requirements regarding how ingredients are presented on a panel. The most important of these is listing ingredients in descending order of concentration or prevalence. The exception to this rule is any ingredient at or below 1% in concentration, which can be listed in any order. Typically, preservatives and dyes are listed at the end.

This is the first step to deciphering product labels. Since manufacturers are not required to list the amount of each ingredient used it can sometimes be difficult to get a handle on the prevalence of the ingredients listed at the top, especially if the ingredient deck is long. Rather than worry about the concentrations of these ingredients, I think a more useful approach is to do a quick scan of say the first 5-7 ingredients since these typically make up the lion’s share of a product. Are they easily recognizable names? Do they sound like something you may have heard in your high school biology or Latin class? Or do they more closely resemble something you learned in your chemistry class?

Don’t let the long names on ingredient panels confuse you. Manufacturers are required by the FDA to provide the botanical or Latin names (sometimes called INCI Names) of ingredients in addition to or instead of their commonly used names. For example Aloe Vera is a commonly used name for aloe but its true botanical name is Aloe Barbadensis. Often you will see the latter term listed alone or followed by the term Aloe Vera or Aloe in parentheses, or the common name followed by the botanical name in parentheses. The INCI (International Nomenclature Cosmetic Ingredient) standard required by the FDA is not necessarily a complete or accurate standard of the spectrum of ingredients available for use in making skin care products. It’s the standard created and instituted by the cosmetics industry so that companies could present universally recognized symbols representing cosmetic ingredients.

It’s not by any means exhaustive or entirely consistent –many INCI names are the same as common names and some INCI names are alternates coined by individual companies in an effort to gain a competitive advantage or distinguish themselves from other companies using the same ingredient under its common name. Because the use of essential oils in cosmetics is not widespread, its naming conventions for essential oils and plants don’t conform to the Botanical naming conventions used by those industries. While the INCI system is not ideal, it is the closest thing we have to a universal standard at this point in time.

Posted September 28th, 2009 under Health and Beauty. Tags: chemicals, Ingredients, natural
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