Five steps. Any bottle, any brand, any aisle. No chemistry required.
Every cosmetic sold in Australia has to list its ingredients, in order, from most to least. That rule is doing you a bigger favour than you think, because it means the label already tells you what you are actually paying for. Most people just do not know where to look.
Here is the whole test. Turn the bottle over and work down the list.
Ingredients are ordered by how much of them is in there. Whatever is listed first is the single biggest thing in the jar.
If that word is Aqua or Water, water is the main ingredient. That is not a scandal, it is how most creams are made. But it is worth knowing before you pay eighty dollars for it.
The first five ingredients are almost all of the product. Everything after that is usually present in fractions of a percent.
So when a brand advertises an ingredient on the front of the pack, find it in the list. If it is sitting near the bottom, next to the preservatives, there is very little of it in there.
Water and oil do not mix, so anything containing both needs help staying together. That help has names, and once you know them you will see them everywhere.
Emulsifiers, thickeners, preservatives, pH adjusters. None of them are villains. They are there to keep the formula stable on a shelf and stop things growing in the water.
Look for Fragrance or Parfum. Everything else on a label has to be named individually, but fragrance is allowed to be listed as a single word, even when it represents a blend of many separate compounds.
That is entirely legal and extremely common. It is also the one line on the label where you genuinely cannot tell what you are putting on your skin.
Now go back over the list and ask: what is left that is actually here for my skin?
Take out the water. Take out the scaffolding. Take out the fragrance and the colour. Whatever remains is the part you were trying to buy.
Pick up a typical moisturiser. First ingredient: water. Next four: an oil, an emulsifier, a humectant, a thickener. Further down: a preservative, a pH adjuster, fragrance.
Strip out the water and the scaffolding and you are left with one oil and one humectant. That is the product. Everything else is delivery and shelf life.
Nothing there is dangerous. But now you know what proportion of the price is doing something for your skin, and you can decide whether it is worth it.
Next time you are standing in the aisle, or looking at the shelf you already own:
You do not need to throw anything out. You just stop buying blind.
It would be a bit rich to hand you that test and not take it myself. So here is our entire label, in order:
No water, which means nothing to emulsify and nothing to preserve. No fragrance, so nothing hidden behind one word. Three ingredients, all of them there for your skin.
I render it myself in New South Wales, in batches small enough that I handle every jar.
See the jar → Your 15% founding member code still applies · 60-day money-back guaranteeMore where this came from: the full set of guides, including what tallow balm actually is and how it compares to shea butter and coconut oil.