“Reading the ingredient list won’t really tell you about the product; it’s all about how the ingredients react to your skin.”

I couldn’t disagree more. The ingredient list is the only part of the product’s copy that you can and should rely on because it is the only part of a cosmetics label that is regulated by the FDA (Source: www.fda.gov). It’s true that knowing how to decipher an ingredient list is difficult, but even if you know how it doesn’t tell you exactly what percentage of each ingredient was used to create the formula; it is a far more reliable source of information than the product’s description and claims. Yes, the way the ingredients react on the skin is also important, but if a product has lackluster or irritating ingredients, or only minuscule amounts of helpful ingredients, then it is a waste of money, plain and simple. In contrast, an elegant product loaded with ingredients that can make skin look, feel, and function better will in all likelihood cause a noticeable improvement, and that has everything to do with what ingredients the product contains and how they react on your skin!

“[Our] product has tiny little micro pearls in it. This is the first time ever that we used isoflavones. Our labs studied the algae that washed up from the ocean. In one to five hours, these little micro pearls and the evaporation of the moisture off your skin go into the tiny little fine lines to help decrease the depth of the lines.”

Algae, in its hundreds of varying forms, are well-known ingredients and have been around for a long time. It’s true that many algae have antioxidant properties (Sources: Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry, February 2002, pages 840–845; and Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004, pages 219–222), but lots of other ingredients do as well. The “tiny little micro pearls” the salesperson mentioned are nothing more than particles of mica, a shiny rock that when powdered gives the product a soft shimmer on skin. It’s nice, but not exotic! Finally, isoflavones are plant estrogens with potent antioxidant properties (Source: Free Radical Biology and Medicine, December 2001, pages 1570–1581). However, the amount of isoflavones in these Clarins products is too minuscule to parlay much, if any, antioxidant benefit to skin.

“Vitamin C is not an antioxidant, but it contains amino acids.”

This statement was from a saleswoman who was trying to explain the differences between vitamin E and vitamin C skin-care products. Her comment is nothing less than silly. Vitamin C in any form is not an amino acid. There are only 20 amino acids, all protein-building substances, of which 10 are called “essential” for humans to consume in their diets, since the body cannot manufacture them on its own (Source: Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry, Third Edition, 1996, pages 30–32). In its natural form, vitamin C is ascorbic acid, and is most definitely and notably an antioxidant, not a protein (Sources: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2002, number 505, pages 113–122; and Journal of Investigative Dermatology, February 2002, pages 372–379). Vitamin C is a worthy ingredient to look for in leave-on skin-care products such as moisturizers and toners because, when used in its stable form (watch for ingredients like magnesium ascorbyl phosphate and tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate), it can reduce the effects of free-radical damage (Source: Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, June 2003, pages 866–874). I suspect the saleswoman I spoke with may have been confusing ascorbic acid with aspartic acid, which is a nonessential amino acid.