The ingredient list on a cream or shampoo can look like a chemistry exam. It follows a few simple rules, though, and once you know them it becomes one of the most useful things on the pack.
Most brands use INCI names: the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. The point is that an ingredient has the same name wherever the product is sold. Water is listed as Aqua. Plant ingredients use their Latin botanical name, sometimes followed by the common one, so shea butter appears as Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter.
Ingredients are listed from the largest amount to the smallest. Below about 1%, the rules most brands follow allow the rest to be listed in any order. So the first five or so ingredients usually make up most of the product, and an ingredient that features on the front of the pack may sit well down the list.
Parfum or Fragrance can stand for a blend of many components listed as a single word. Some markets, including the EU, require certain fragrance components that are known to cause allergies (such as limonene and linalool) to be named separately when they’re above a set level.
About “natural”
There’s no single legal definition of “natural” for cosmetics, so it means whatever the brand means by it. The ingredient list is a better guide than the word on the front.
