Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - Lip Service: The Dirty Secret Behind Celebrity Beauty Brands | Laura DiGirolamo, ESQ
Episode Date: June 9, 2026The beauty industry has been putting ingredients in your lip products that they'd NEVER be allowed to put in your food — and nobody is talking about it.Laura DiGirolamo is a beauty attorney, ind...ustry insider, and founder of YOM Beauty, and she's blowing the whistle on one of the biggest blind spots in modern beauty. We're talking flavored balms, vanilla frosting lip masks, tinted glosses — products literally designed for your mouth, treated like they never enter your body at all. She breaks down what's actually in them, why the science is scarier than anyone wants to admit, and what industry insiders already know but won't say out loud.Thank you to our sponsors!TAYLOR DUKES WELLNESS: Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% off your purchaseZEBRA: Use code "ALEX" for 10% off any orderGEVITI: Check out their free tier planLOVEBIRD: Use code 'ALEX20' for 20% off your purchaseBRANCH BASICS: Use code "ALEX15" for 15% off Starter KitsQ FOR QUINN: Use code "ALEX" for 15% off your non-toxicOur Guest:Laura DiGirolamo, ESQLaura's Links:Yom Beauty WebsiteYom Beauty IGLaura's Personal IGLip Service Alliance IGFOLLOW ALEX:Instagram | @realalexclarkInstagram | @cultureapothecaryX | @yoalexrapzYouTube | @RealAlexClarkSpotify | Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark Apple Podcast | Culture Apothecary with Alex ClarkSubscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always talk to a qualified healthcare professional for any health-related questions or decisions.
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80 to 90% of the lip products you're buying doesn't matter whether it's in a drugstore or whether it's in a very prestige outfit.
80 to 90% of them are made with micropastics.
What are the terms that mean plasticizers on the ingredients list?
Polymer, copolymer is a plastic, synthetic wax.
Lip products are classed as cosmetic.
And when you say cosmetic, that means topical.
If we're looking at them as topical products, but we are flavoring them like food,
We're reapplying them way more today than we were 30 years ago.
Some people are reapplying up to 40 times a day.
You're one of the first that I'm telling this about publicly.
This is nerve-wracking because this is a multi-multi-billion dollar industry,
and it's just me.
And I need help from people like yourself or unafraid to stand up and go,
hey, wait a second, this is wrong.
You've spent your whole life eating your lip products.
Every lip gloss, every lipstick, every flavored balm.
Every vanilla frosted lip mask marketed to teenage girls is.
The beauty industry regulates these products almost exactly the same way it regulates body lotion,
but the skin on our lips is completely different, and we're ingesting it.
Today's guest says one of the biggest blind spots in modern beauty is hiding in plain sight.
Products designed for the mouth are being treated like they never enter the body at all.
Laura D. Girolamo is a beauty attorney and beauty industry insider turned whistleblower.
She helped pioneer clean beauty before clean beauty was even a thing.
She advised giants like Sephora on emerging trends and invented one of the
the first premium healthy deodorants long before wellness beauty became mainstream.
She is also the founder of Yom Beauty, a completely clean lip mask with food grade ingredients
and zero plastic.
If you listen to my bombshell interview this year with Jason Karp on the inside baseball
of the food industry as well as plastic, you are going to love this episode, same energy.
Laura says that many lip products may contain ingredients never intended to be ingested,
including plastic, petroleum derivatives, artificial dyes, and compounds already restricted
in food in parts of the world.
Prepare for some seriously shocking revelations
about the lip cosmetic industry
and what the science shows
is being sold to us
without any safety regulation.
Watch this episode on the real Alex Clark
YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify.
The show is free,
and the only thing I ask for in return
is your five-star reviews,
which takes less than six seconds to do.
Please welcome beauty lawyer,
Laura D. Girolamo to Culture Apothecary.
Laura, you've spent 20 years in beauty now,
and you helped build clean beauty.
before there ever was clean beauty.
Because now we hear this phrase all the time.
But you were really at the forefront of this entire explosion.
I had built a brand that was the precursor to clean because natural was so confusing
that we decided to list out the ingredients that we committed to not using.
And then once Sephora saw that people were responding to this, hey, we're going to list
that we don't use petrochemicals.
We don't use phylates.
We don't use.
and it was a laundry list, then they started to see there's an opportunity and Sephora was one of the first, if not the first, to actually define what clean beauty was and then to start encouraging brands to go exclusively with them. And that's how that whole movement started. But I was at the forefront of that and I saw an opportunity to create the world's first healthy deodorant in the Sephora context. So a cool deodorant that
didn't have aluminum or any of the other ingredients, including propylene glycol. And to make that into
a solid stick was a real chemical feat. So when I say chemical, anything that you use, sometimes
you can refer to as a chemical molecule, obviously. I don't mean it is full of chemicals. I mean,
it was just very difficult to create, with a cosmetic chemist, a solid stick that didn't use
any of those ingredients that people didn't want under their armpits. So we were the first. We
launched that and sales at Sephora increased in that category by 200%. And they went, oh my God,
people want clean, healthy deodorants. We should do more of this. And that's what started that
trend. So who were you with Sephora? Like, what were you doing for them? I did start out as a
consultant in innovation and brand. So I'm an ideas person. And I was consulting for them on the side,
just looking at the gaps in the marketplace and looking at if things weren't really.
selling as well as they used to why that might be the case. So understanding consumer behavior.
And I was a real nerd. I really got the chemistry of it, even though I'm not a cosmetic chemist.
So if I saw an opportunity for a formula to be innovative, I could guide them in that. But I then
started my own brand, which was the precursor to clean. And we started with natural fragrances and
body butters. And that's when I saw the opportunity for the deodorant. So I was a brand that was
exclusive to Sephora as a brand founder. So I worked with them as a consultant and then I switched
into creating a brand of my own. Wait, can you say what the brand was? Yeah. It's a brand called La Vanilla.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, La Vanilla. They had those perfumes. So perfumes and I think our big claim
to fame was that healthy deodorant. At the time, I would go to Whole Foods and you would see
like the salts, the big salts, or you would see sticks, but they were made out of vegetable
glycerin, which is a humectin. So when you would put them on, they'd make you really moist under
the armpit, which is not good if you don't want to stink. And you go into Sephora, and you would
see at the time, like, famous perfume brands that would have a stick, but that was full of
propylene glycol. So there was nothing in the, like, luxury, felt good, was natural, didn't use
any of the no-nose. And that was the opportunity. Yeah, I remember LaVinilla. So I worked in
Sephora in like 2013, 2014. What? Yeah. So I remember that. Oh my God. Yes.
So we were exclusive at Savor at the time.
That was like a big deal.
That was a big deal.
That was my time to shine because I was doing things with LaVanilla that was creating that space for clean movement to begin.
So how do you go from being the right-hand woman to Sifora and helping them blow up and change products to becoming Beauty's biggest whistleblower?
I see what I've discovered now as something that most people would.
I wouldn't have seen. I'd like to think that most people in the industry just didn't see this either. And because I'm used to finding the white space opportunities for brands, when I saw, in this case, regulatory formulation, consumer behavior, it all came together. And then I was like, wait a second, this doesn't, this doesn't, this doesn't compute. We're not looking at lip products the right way.
It's less of everybody's out trying to poison you. We need to blow the whistle. It's more, oh my God, things have changed so much in 30 years and the regulations haven't caught up and the marketplace has just exploded. And the gap between how we use lip products and how they're being regulated is so big that I think everybody just follows protocol, right? So if you're a brand founder and you want to go into creating a lip product, you go into a contract manufacturer or someone who, who,
who formulates and you say, I'd like to make a super juicy high shine lip gloss. Well, even if it's
clean, they're still reaching for the same topical ingredients that they would reach for. Even though
it's a lip product, it's a cosmetic. So they have their laundry. Oh, you want higher shine? Let's use
more polybutane. Let's use more. It's just how the industry formulates. So as a brand, you're really
not going to know about this blind spot unless you're really, really up to date on regulatory
and the differences between what regulations cover and how consumers are actually using product.
So when I say the blind spot, what's the blind spot?
Lip products are classed as cosmetic.
And when you say cosmetic, that means topical.
It means external use only.
Now, if you put something on your lips, if you and I have a conversation, conversation,
You are craning in product all throughout the day as you wear that on your, then you take a sip of water or you have a snack and how many times are we reapplying? Some people are reapplying up to 40 times a day. So you see that, oh, my lips don't have this on anymore. I'll go back and reapply. Well, where is it going? Now, if you consider most of the products that we're buying today at Sephora or Alta or any of the beauty retailers or even at the drug stores, they're flavored like food. Well,
Why are they flavoring it like food if it's not going in?
Why would you care that it tastes like cherry or it tastes like gummy bears or it tastes like birthday cake?
It doesn't like, why would that matter?
It matters because your tongue is making contact all the time.
If I said, let's make that flavored like something really gross, would that product sell?
Probably not.
And it's on your mouth and it's going in.
So the blind spot is if we're looking at them as topical products, but we are.
flavoring them like food, we're reapplying them way more today than we were 30 years ago.
How much are we actually taking in? And if you look at the stats, let's look at putting it into
very understandable terms like visually. In Europe, where they acknowledge ingestion in the
regulation, a grain of rice is what they assume you take in a day. How many people do you know
stop at a grain of rice a day in the reapplication? What's reality? Reality is 95th,
percentile, if you look at the modern usage rates, can go up to nearly half a kilo a year.
Which is what?
Half a kilo a year.
Oh, my God.
Depending on the lip gloss tube size, it can be 16 tubes, 20 tubes.
That's what we're eating.
You're eating that much lip gloss a year if you're a frequent user of lip products, yes.
Are you working at Sephora when you find this out?
And then you're like, I have to get out of here or what's happening?
No, no, no, no.
Now, Sephora is, that was a client a long, long time ago. They were a wonderful retailer who partnered with me as a brand co-founder. Back then, they were awesome partners. The people that I were working with back then were all about paving new ways, which is why they created clean. No, this happened really weirdly after I got really ill. So I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer for,
and a half years ago. And I had still been working in the industry as a consultant. By then,
I had sold my business. I had moved to Europe for a better life. Still working really hard.
And then I fell really ill about four and a half years ago. That's interesting. Breast cancer with
the line of work you did. Do you tie that back to being around so many synthetic estrogens?
I would say environmental factors now. Everybody is saying for sure there's a tie between
how many were exposed to every day versus what it was 40 years ago, 50 years ago when these
regulations started to come into play. So nowadays, you know, how many products do you use in a day?
I would definitely say I'm now way more conscientious of bringing that number way down and changing
the quality of the types of things. So things like fragrance, I listen to your podcasts and I can say
without a doubt fragrance is one of the things that I am now really careful about. But like when
you think about it, a lot of lip products actually contain perfume, fragrance, that you're
putting on your lips and taking in. So looking at this blind spot and why it's so important,
right? When I got this download and I take it as a download, I got sick, I got out of hospital
and I asked myself, what am I doing with my life? And I realized, you know, I wanted a greater
purpose. And it was just there in the back of my head. I wanted something bigger in terms of
importance in my life to do than just consult and create more great products and brands.
And anyway, I ended up taking a regulatory course because I'm a lawyer. So I did a continuing
legal education course, which is part of the requirement of keeping your California bar.
So I did the course and I came out and I went, I was on cosmetic regulations and I went,
wow, that is like crazy. So 1938 FDA, you know, looking at how modern beauty products have you
I went to bed that night and I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning like a lightning bolt had hit me.
And it was like, wait a second.
If lip products are cosmetics, that means they're topicals.
And if they're topicals and we're putting it on our mouths, what's being regulated and what's not being regulated.
So we're treating lip cosmetics as if they're like foot cream.
Correct.
100%.
In a nutshell, that's it.
But we should be regulating lip products as if they were food.
I personally think right now until we, so there's a gap of data in terms of what we're putting in
lip products, how much we're ingesting and what the effects are of that on our health.
So, for example, it's well documented, petrolatum, which is the thing that petroleum jelly is made
from, right? Petrolatum, mineral oil. It is proven that it bioaccum accumulates in the body
when you ingest it. What does that mean? It means that if you're putting petroleum jelly or
on your lips because it's a great occlusive and it blocks in moisture, it is proven that that
bioaccumulates when it's swallowed. And that's an oil byproduct. Yes. So what does that do to the
body? It bioaccumulates and then who knows? It basically accumulates in your organs and your spleen.
So I've got like my own little tub of Vaseline somewhere in my body from being a little kid.
I won't use that term, but yep, yeah, yeah, pretty much. So what they did in Europe, this was amazing.
In 2013, the Chemical Association, who is meant to be advising on on the safety.
of these chemicals. They said, hey, wait a second, actually, if you're going to use petroleum,
petrolatum or mineral oil, we need to make a food grade version of that so that it doesn't bioaccumulate.
And so the European Union decided to take that as a recommendation, as a voluntary recommendation
for brands. If you're going to use that ingredient, try and make a food grade. I mean,
that's how the industry at the ingredient level definitely sees that there is an issue with some of
these things going into the body. It's just right now nothing is required from brands or anyone
making this stuff to say, is it safe to be ingested? Because at the end of the day, it's for external
use only, not for ingestion. But yet, we're flavoring this stuff like food. And we're taking our
six-year-olds or eight-year-olds or ten-year-olds. Here, pick a lip gloss. And you don't realize that actually
80, they say 80 to 90 percent of those lip glosses are made from microplastics. So things like copolymers,
things like, you know, they're plastic ingredients, flavored like food. It's a what? It's a, it was a big
aha moment for me. And I was in the industry for over 20 years. So if I was just seeing it at that
moment, what our brand's going to think when when this stuff starts to come out? So how does an
entire multibillion dollar industry miss something like this? Fact, reach, which is the
organization in Europe that is responsible for chemical law. How? How?
has instituted a phase out of microplastics, for example, from, I think, you know, it was a few years or four years ago, to 2035. Okay. So remember when there was this big thing about microplastic beads in body wash? Like no more microplastic beads in body wash because you're washing it off and it's going into the environment. I forgot about that. But yes, now I remember. You just unlocked a core memory from it. Okay. So I applauded that. That's great. But they all.
also have in this same document that by 2031, lip products need to come with a warning on the box that
says contains microplastics. And then by 2035, we need to phase those out. Now, that sounds great.
If we already know this, why can't we start doing it now? That's what I'm saying. And not only that,
but shouldn't consumers know now that this is what's in the lip product? And so what did you do to get
this information to consumers because you're like busting this wide open. This is all new for me. You're
one of the first that I'm telling this about publicly. So I'm I'm really honored to be a part of this.
I'm really grateful that you gave me a safe place to do this. This is nerve-wracking because
this is a multi-multi-billion dollar industry and it's just me. And I need help from people like
yourself who are unafraid to stand up and go, hey, wait a second, this is wrong.
Because I can tell you, if it's just me sitting there in the corner going, hey, we shouldn't have microplastics in our lip products.
We're eating them off our face. We should at least not flavor them like food and encourage people to eat them.
Like, what are we? If I don't have help from people like you, I'm just there in the corner and I'm easy to shut up.
So we need a consumer movement.
We need a movement. And so this is what I've done. When this download happened, I realized I needed to do two things because I'd been in the industry for a long time.
The first was to make sure I could substantiate this with teams of experts, that it wasn't just me saying this like an opinion.
So I started to gather the biologists, the toxicologist, the cosmetic chemists, the regulatory experts, the lawyers.
And I devised two really cool groups of people that said, we're going to write a paper, a peer-reviewed paper that takes data that's out there, it's existing.
We're not in a lab making any expert.
We're just going to take the data that's there.
and we're going to now refocus it to show you that there's a blind spot that we need to address right away.
One is regulatory.
So everywhere in the world, there is a problem because we're classing lip products as cosmetics as topicals.
So we have to change how we look at that.
Regulatory, what is going on in the U.S., what's going on in Canada, what's going on in the EU, what's going on in the UK, what's going on in China.
Like let's look at the regulatory system and see what's slipping through.
And by the way, I haven't – sometimes regular –
regulations because they're so slow so slow to change, it's easier just to say maybe we start a
movement where we're self-policing and we do better. Sometimes you don't need the regulation.
You need transparency and you need everybody to commit to a better standard. And that's what I'm
hoping what I'm doing will do. So the first thing we did was create this group of experts,
create two papers, one on the regulatory frameworks around the world, quantifying the blind spot.
We're regulating them like foot cream, as you say. It's got to change. And measuring that up against
real world data. How many lip products are we using a day? I mean, there's this Kylie Jenner video
that came out and everybody's like, oh my God, layering four and five lip products in one
application. We're not talking about putting on a lip bomb now twice a day, which is what these
studies from 30 years ago are flagging. We're looking at really high usage rates of lip products
and exposure rates now that have exponentially gone up. So the first was create that legal paper.
The second was to look at lip biology, which is different than skin biology. Now, you know in pharma,
the way you look at lip and mouth tissue
is very different than the way you look at regular skin tissue.
They look at this as a drug delivery system
that bypasses your digestive system, right?
So if you take a testosterone pill,
they clock that around a 30% absorption rate in the stomach,
and if you put it in your oral mucosa, it's 80%.
So the pharma industry knows that this is like a sponge.
And yet in the cosmetic world,
even if there's an absorption, you know, test that you have to do, which most don't require it,
they look at dermal skin, which is 15 to 20 cells deep alone on the top layer.
This is three to five.
Well, people know it's a sponge.
Look, we put nicotine patches in our mouth.
Right, right.
So if we know that it's a place of absorption, why does the cosmetic industry treat it like regular skin?
And it's just because nobody's called them out?
It's because nobody's really said, hey, lip biology is different than regular skin.
We need a different model, which is what we're building.
So we have a patent pending on that, which I've placed under the nonprofit that we have developed
to help the industry change and close this gap.
Like I'm really serious about trying to do everything I can to help the industry change.
I'm not pointing fingers.
I'm just saying, hey, join me because this is really important.
And it's a problem now when you have six, eight-year-olds, 12-year-olds.
you know, the fastest growing market from age seven to, sorry, nine to 17 young girls,
they're eating microplastics off their lip every day and nobody's saying anything.
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When you took this team of beauty toxicologists
and you were looking into some of the top lip products
from the biggest brands out there,
which brands are guilty of selling girls
almost exclusively plastic lip gloss?
I would say that 80 to 90% of the lip products you're buying
doesn't matter whether it's in a drugstore
or whether it's in a very prestige.
outfit, like a retailer that's very high end. 80 to 90% of them are made with lip with microplastics.
And that's just one of the ingredients. Like this is a much bigger story. For example, I'll just say this,
you know the ingredient titanium dioxide. It should be banned in our food. Correct. And in Europe,
in 2022, in the EU, they banned titanium dioxide because when ingested, they are saying there's no
safe level, it's a genotoxin. And if it's a genotoxin, it means it's chemically altering your DNA.
So if there's no safe level of titanium dioxide when ingested, and we're ingesting our lip
products and even organic and clean, use titanium dioxide as a colorant, it's an opacity agent,
it's a whitening agent. So if you're putting really high levels of titanium dioxide in lip products
to color it, and you're eating it off your lips, and you're trying to get it out of a Kellogg's, you know,
cereal, who's looking at the titanium dioxide in lip products? Which brands are using titanium dioxide?
Almost all of them. Anything that's colored will use titanium. Even the organic ones will use
titanium. That's why you do have a handful of products around the brands around the world that say
titanium dioxide free. But in lip products, it is very rare. We are talking below 5% of lip brands,
even less than that. Okay, so let me just throw out a couple names that are super popular. So
I, for years and years and years, was addicted to Linage.
Addicted. I had that little pot. And in fact, the lip mask, technically lip mask, you're
supposed to just do it at night. I had to have it all day long every day. And I am putting
that on constantly. Now I've moved on. I love the primally pure lip balm. So that's what I use.
So I've been off it for like a year and a half now. But I was a Linage addict. What can you
tell me about them? If I were to be lineage, if I were to be.
them, I would go back and look at my ingredient list and try to disassociate food flavoring
with plasticized ingredients. That's probably where I would start because the delicious that the
you open up a tub of that and it hits you in the face with how perfumed it is.
Yeah, chocolate or whatever. Oh, and it just smells so delicious. The other thing on Lanage products,
it says like Lake Die No. 5 and all that. So it's.
It's like food dye, but cosmetic version, colors.
Right.
Okay.
So now you're getting into, oh, God, this is so layered.
This is why I had to do the papers because this is so layered and it's different for every country.
Because I keep seeing these, like, I'm saying food dye because I don't know, you know, this is.
Cosmetic dyes.
Right.
Cosmetic dyes.
Those are cosmetic dyes.
So we know that food dye is bad, artificial food dye.
Is cosmetic dye bad in lip products?
I would say I would avoid them because they are the.
The FDA started regulating synthetic dyes in cosmetics because of, you know, making sure that when they make synthetic dyes, levels of contamination, for example, are really looked at and regulated, right?
Because when you make a synthetic dye, it can be contaminated with heavy metals.
That's why it's so important to make sure that the dyes that you are using in cosmetics are regulated.
That's why the FDA stepped in, I think, and started regulating synthetic dye. So if you want to make any product, any cosmetic product in the U.S. and you want to use a colorant, a dye, that needs to be, it's the only ingredient that requires pre-approval at the FDA before using it in a product. So if you're a manufacturer of a synthetic dye, you get that pre-approval from the FDA. And then that gets released as an agreed upon,
synthetic dye that you can use in cosmetics. The problem with this is exposure levels, right?
Remember I said microplastics? This is just one of the ingredients we should be concerned about
in lip products because of the high levels of ingestion rates that we are having with today's
usage. But you also have titanium dioxide, which is almost in every colored lip product.
And that is not safe, apparently, according to the EU. When ingested, we're trying to get out
of the food system in the U.S. We know we want to get TD out of food for a reason, right? Well,
If you're taking it in off your lips,
anyone, every time I see someone with bright colored red lipstick
and they're arguing about taking titanium dioxide out of food,
I'm like, can I take that out of your lipstick too?
Because it's like it's, I hope that it's a titanium dioxide-free red lipstick,
but they're hard to find.
If the majority of lip glosses, lip masks, lip oils, and lip balms are plastic,
are lipsticks also majority plastic?
Like, what about the luxury brands?
S. Day Lodder, YSL, makeup forever.
Luxury makes no difference.
They're plastic?
Lip sticks could be made with more natural ingredients like beeswax.
That you can get better lipstick products.
But to make an opacity, to make a color on lip that really pops, you have to use titanium dioxide right now.
But, I mean, obviously, I'm working with Yom Beauty on food.
grade alternatives that are also cosmetic grade but food grade alternatives. So the innovation is
catching up, but the majority of lipsticks will be using titanium dioxide. You know, when you look at
the back of a box and it says plus minus titanium dioxide on the ingredient means it could or could
not contain depending on whether or not it's a color. So let's say you go out and you look at one of these
very high-end luxury brands that does a range of lip glosses. They have a clear one and then they have
eight colored ones. And on the back, it'll say plus minus titanium dioxide. That's because the
clear one doesn't have it. Oh, wow. But the other eight that have color in it will have it in order
to create the color on lip. So it's an ingredient that's widely used by the cosmetic industry to
create a white tone that makes the color pop. If you're listening and you want to know, does my
lipstick or does my lip gloss or my lip balm or lip oil have plastic in it, what are the terms that
mean plasticizers on the ingredients.
For example, I would look at anything that has the word copolymer and then dive deeper into
where that copolymer comes from.
So polymer, copolymer is a plastic.
So you should look at that and say, hmm, an interesting one, which we are just now starting.
So again, I did two things once I discovered the blind spot.
The first is to create the nonprofit.
The nonprofit is to close this gap and create consumer awareness with the experts.
that can help us change as quickly as possible, right?
Part of that is to look at what ingredients we should really be avoiding altogether,
given the oral exposure, right?
It's not just swallowing it, it's oral mucosa.
So we have to look at the mouth very differently.
So if you look at something that has plastics in it,
chances are it's going to have nanoplastics in it.
And if you put that on something that's three to five cells deep,
what is happening there. Nobody knows because we have never looked at it. It's a big blind spot.
Look at things like copolymer. Look at things like synthetic wax. Synthetic wax is really interesting one.
Through this research, you look at synthetic wax. What's the number one thing that people say when they're marketing their beauty brand? It's vegan. It's vegan, right? And you think vegan means cruelty-free.
that those two things are not synonymous. Cruelty-free is cruelty-free. Look for a cruelty-free seal.
Vegan means there's no animal or animal byproduct in it. So if you want to use beeswax,
you can't claim vegan. Oh, so if it's vegan, it's just chemicals. I mean, what are you going to use instead of beeswax?
Synthetic wax. Synthetic wax. Plastic. Beats me. You have to look into what synthetic wax is.
And I can tell you, because I just looked under a microscope with this lab that we're working with.
and they were like, wait a second, this is not polyethylene, this is not what is this? And you look
in it, the particle sizes are exactly the same as a microplastic. They're solid. They don't biodegrade
and they're not water soluble. They behave just like a microplastic, but what is it? And if you look
at what is in a synthetic wax, it's not a real transparent ingredient on, like they don't say
where it comes from. Is it coming from a plant wax and a plant ester? Is it coming from
petroleum, it's not listed on the box, so you don't know. So I would just avoid synthetic wax
altogether. In my opinion, I just don't know where that's coming from. So I'd rather not use that.
I'd rather take a bees wax any day over a synthetic wax because I know where that comes from.
And you can source things from bees in a very humane way that support colonies, that support,
you know, I mean, we've looked into this with Yom Beauty. So there's a way to do it responsibly.
and I would take that over synthetic wax any day.
Cruelty-free is important.
Vegan is not important.
How many people are vegan in this world?
1% of people are vegan.
So I'm not saying cruelty-free is not important.
We have a great partnership with cruelty-free.
We love cruelty-free.
Everything should be cruelty-free.
We should not be testing on animals.
I'm highly against it.
But vegan does not mean cruelty-free.
What vegan means is you have to find alternatives
to wonderful ingredients like beeswax.
We took three of the world's very readily available, very popular products.
And we did an analysis under the Lipservice Alliance.
We looked at what is in these products.
And the level of, I mean, it's right there on the side.
If you see something that's a plasticizing ingredient on the side,
you know that if you test it for microplastics,
it's likely going to have microplastics, and that's what we were finding.
And the thing is that there is no standardized test in the industry for a brand to say,
hey, let's go and test my lip product for microplastics.
We're not talking about contamination, right?
Like if you go and you buy a drink and it was made on a line and it had some sort of contamination
with microplastics, that's pretty typical.
Microplastics are everywhere.
What we're seeing in these formulas is that they're made,
from microplastic ingredients. So if you look at copolymers, you look at polybutane, you look at,
you know, and by the way, polybutane is not technically considered a microplastic, even though it's a
plastic. So polybutane is an ingredient that's used in a lot of lip products. Now, if I were to tell
you what polybutane really is. Tell us. Well, I did, I just went, I'm going to just
see if there's an adjacent industry that uses polybutane. And if you look at it, it's literally
liquid plastic. Polybutane is liquid, but it's sticky and it's tacky and it's what we use in
gloss, not we as in me, I don't use it, but it's what the industry typically uses in lip gloss
and in lip oils and in anything that's got a shine or a tack. So if you go, this lasts a long
time, whatever, look to see if there's polybutene on there. Polybutane is the same ingredient
that they use in rodent and fly traps to stick the pest to the, to stick the animal to the, to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the gluey bed. Yeah, it's the gluey bet.
Ew. So if I were to tell you that a great majority of lip products, it doesn't matter if it's a premium brand or if it's a dollar store brand, doesn't matter. Polybutane is in a lot of lip products. I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Again, it's completely non-toxic when you're talking about it being on the outside of the body.
They put it in these rodent traps and they think, oh, well, if you put your fingers on, am I going to get poisoned?
It's not poison. It's just glue. You were putting glue on your lip.
Yeah. I mean, you can easily go and look this up. If you want to look up which brands have polybutane in it, you can easily see it's amazing brands that I love.
It could be, it could be, I'm going to get sued for this.
How? It's the public on their ingredients box.
Because people will sue me to shut me up.
They want me to be quiet.
I'm already getting it.
That's why I'm saying I'm so happy that I'm here.
Because the more people get behind me and make the industry wake up and become accountable to say,
at the very minimum, we should not be flavoring this stuff so that's delicious to lick off your lips.
You know, polybutane is something that nobody's studied in terms of ingestion.
What happens when we ingest it?
I'm saying we don't know because the data's not there.
But if petrolatum is bioaccumulating, what's polybutane doing when you're ingesting it?
So if you had to give a percentage estimate of how much of a conventional lip product is straight plastic, what would be a fair answer?
Well, fair answer is 80 to 90% of lip products contain microplastics.
And if there's one microplastic ingredient, there are typically many because it's what's used to create shine.
tack and long wear.
Do these huge beauty brand execs know that this stuff is in their products?
Probably not.
And that's what I'm trying to say is that I work with so many wonderful people over the years.
And I was one of them in the industry that would just say, oh, yeah, lip products.
And you just make lip products the way you know that the regulations allow you to make.
It's completely legal.
We spend so much time talking about clean food, clean skincare, clean makeup and clean household products.
But what about the clothes touching?
some of the most absorbent parts of our body all day long. I'm talking about your socks, your
bras, your underwear, your kids underwear. The basics that we wear every single day and rarely
think twice about. That's why I love Q for Quinn, the cleanest GOTS certified organic cotton
basics that I've ever found. Their founder actually started the company because she couldn't find
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They've got underwear, bras, socks, loungeware, active wear, even organic cotton underwear for kids,
which is something that more parents should be thinking about.
I also love that they offer undyed options for people who want the fabric in its most natural state,
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Can we talk about serial mascots for a second?
Because when you look at them as an adult,
it's honestly a little unsettling.
You've got a rabbit committing serial theft,
a leprechaun hiding from children
who are essentially stalking him for marshmallows,
a tiger screaming like he hasn't slept in 72 hours,
and a bird having a full psychological breakdown over chocolate puffs.
I think the reason those students,
cereals needed cartoon animals screaming at you in the first place is because the ingredients are
basically a lab experiment. Most cereals, even the ones pretending to be healthy with words like
multi-grain or a heart health sticker on the box, are full of synthetic pesticides, refined sugar,
artificial dyes, and ultra-processed junk designed for big food to make big profits. So I buy
Lovebird cereal. I keep so much on hand because it's my boyfriend's favorite snack with
A2 whole milk when he comes over or raw milk. It was started by a dad who left his big food job
to make real cereal for his daughter. Think of it like your childhood cereal went to therapy,
cleaned up its life, and started listening to Culture Apothecary. Gosh, I hope so. Lovebird removes the
fake stuff, the pesticide soaked grains and all that sugar and instead uses organic whole food ingredients
like prebiotic fiber-rich cassava from regenerative farms and honey for sweetness. Everything is
third-party tested. They donate 20% of profits to fight childhood cancer and their 100% family-owned
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help K through 12 schools swap junk cereal for organic cereal at the same price.
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As you've been coming out of this information,
have brands tried to silence or discredit or dismiss you?
There's one company that is being extremely unreasonable on a different
matter that has to do with trademark. And I just decided, okay, well, I'm out. I'm going to change the
name. I'm going to do something else because I just don't, I just don't want to put my energy into
legal battles. And I just have a feeling that that's what's going to start happening.
Is there anything besides titanium dioxide that's being phased out of our food that's still being
allowed on our lips? Well, the synthetic dyes would definitely be, if you, if you mix all of these
things into one and you think how many times a day do I apply it. Let's look at some of these
ingredients. The plastics are just one of them. That's just one part of it. Titanium dioxide,
it's another big one. Petrolatum or mineral oil, huge. And it's proven that if it's not a food
grade petroleum, which I don't know how you make food grade mineral oil, but it can happen where
it's designed not to be ingested in the same way as a cosmetic grade, then I would put that on the list, petrolatum, mineral oil, perfume.
Don't know anybody who'd want to be putting perfume on their salad. Why would you put on your lips and eat it? But it's in a lot of stuff.
So if you put, if you see perfume slash fragrance in your lip product, you're eating that off your lips. And it's also on your mucosal membrane, which is you bypass.
your digestive system with something like perfume and you put it into this bloodstream,
you know, this has got direct access to your bloodstream. That's when you have to worry about
endocrine disruption, right? So we're putting perfume on something that has very little barrier
protection. Which, you know, clean brands. I know you have Yom Beauty, which by, oh my God,
I will just say this. And like, this is not a sponsored episode. You're not a sponsor of my show.
I get paid zero dollars to say this. You know, I told you I had this lineage.
addiction. Your product, this Yom Beauty lip balm or whatever, is an exact dupe. It is an exact
dupe to lineage. We think it's better. Well, it is because it's completely clean. Even the tinted
color in it, it's all like food. Food. So what we did with Yom Beauty. So getting back to when you
said, okay, so what did you do? You've had this download. Then what? So aside from forming the
lip service alliance nonprofit, which is meant to help the industry to change. I'm
inviting the industry to change with me as quickly as possible. This isn't a finger pointing.
This is an arms open, wide, come and help me change this as quickly as possible. The second thing
was to prove that we can do it better. That's what Yom Beauty is. It's a proof of concept.
And we decided to make the bar really high because we don't have a lot of this data that we need
for this very sensitive area of our bodies that we are inundating with product all day long.
it's in a glass jar. Food safe glass jar. So Yom Beauty is a proof of concept. And what we did there was
it's really important to have cosmetic grade as a standard because that's for skin. Right. So when you're
putting something on your skin, that's what cosmetic grade addresses. But in addition, we went a step above,
even though it wasn't legally required, to make sure every single ingredient was food grade certified.
And what that means is that every ingredient in there has both a cosmetic regulation certificate and a food grade.
certificate so that if it accidentally goes into your body, it's food grade certified. And we don't just
use any standard. We use EU standard. So as you know, in the food system, in the food supply,
and the food regulations, the EU tends to be more strict when it comes to what it allows in its
food. So we are using food grade standards at the EU level. This is really important because I,
this was one of the first questions I get asked when I talk to people about this. They're like, well,
what about my app? I can scan my app and it'll tell me, like some of these lip products that you
scan, they get like 80, 90, 100%. They're on the wrong algorithm. What do you mean? So if I tell the
app, clean means this, this, this, this, this. But that ingredient list is about a topical. It's not
about whether or not it's safe to ingest. Then your algorithm is testing safety based on topical
safety. Now, if you say, let's look at titanium dioxide when it's ingested, let's look at the data there.
Let's look at petroleum, petrolatum, when it's ingested. Let's look at polybutane or hydrogenated polyosate
when it's ingested. You look at it when ingested. Let's not even talk about the mucosal
thing, because that's really complicated right now and that's fine, but like just talk about ingestion.
If that app were to say, is this safe to eat, what do you think those ingredients would flag?
Now, I can tell you from scanning some of those clean products and looking at them as a lip safety,
and I look at their safety scores, I'm like, how does something with copolymer, a plasticite,
how does that get a safety rating so high?
Because it's not looking at you're eating your lip product.
So what I would say is I would love to invite the top apps to join the lip service alliance.
We will give you access to the lip model.
And let's start testing lip safety the right way.
Let's look at ingestion.
How much are you eating?
And let's look at the absorption through lip.
Now score it.
As a consumer, there were many years I assumed if it's being sold at a grocery store,
this has gone through extensive testing to make sure that it's safe.
I'm thinking the same with my cosmetics.
If I'm going into a big department store or a big box store to buy cosmetics,
this must be going through all sorts of rules and regulations in order for it to be sold to me.
What is the reality of how much cosmetics are being tested in the United States before we're allowed to purchase?
So the FDA was formed in 1938.
Not a history lesson, just an idea of how long ago.
And then you think back in 1938 how many people were wearing makeup.
Okay.
So that's when it was started.
That's why in 2022, they started MoCRA as a branch of the FDA for cosmetics, the modernization of cosmetic regulation act, okay?
But since even MoCRA in 2022, no one's updated lip regulations.
It's just still the same as it was in 1938.
So just to give you some context, how are we applying, what are we applying, how are we making products in lip?
So just to give you that's the gap in the U.S. 1938 to today.
When you think about how the regulation works for cosmetics, there is no pre-market testing required for any product or any ingredient in a cosmetic before it goes to market except for synthetic dyes in color cosmetics.
That's it.
And that, again, helps to regulate whether or not something is contaminated with heavy metals.
That's it in the U.S.
That's it?
That's all there is.
If you want to make a product, you go to a contract manufacturer and you say, I'd like to make a lip product. And they go, okay, great, what do you want? Long wear, high shine. They have libraries of formula that they've been doing it like this. And then there are ingredient companies that come and say, oh my God, we made this even higher shine. We made this so that you can make a 72 hour wear lip stain. Well, who's tested that on the mucosal membrane? Nobody. Nobody. There's no testing on oral mucosa membrane or lip vermilion membrane or what happens if that accidentally
goes in when you're eating it. So what happens when a girl starts using flavored lip products at age
seven and then reapplies them for 15 years? That's a good question. We just don't know. Well, actually,
maybe we do know. We do know. I think we, to a certain of it. Everyone is sick. Everybody's
experiencing infertility. These regulations and rules have not been updated for how many years? Since 1938
in the U.S. Since 1938. So actually, we have seen multiple generations go through this. And we're not
getting better. So obviously, I don't think it's only lip balm, but there's a million things.
especially in America, that we are allowing into our clothing, allowing into our food,
allowing into our environment with pesticides, and allowing into our cosmetics that is totally
inhumane. It's not good. And this is the thing. I think that the free marketplace is really great.
I think that, you know, encouraging people to be innovative is really great. But I think we now,
in the beauty industry, we need to take responsibility. Should there be age restrictions or warnings
on lip products? Well, I mean, this is what Europe is trying to do with REACH, right? They said by
2031 lip products need to come with the warning that it has microplastics in it. But I think
we need to do better than that. That's why the lip service alliance exists. We need to look at this as
soon as possible, create that lip model where we're testing on the right type of skin tissue in the lab
so we know how everything is being absorbed and what's happening. We're not, we should be testing it on
dermal models, which is what some people do. It's not legally required, but some people do. And that's
another thing, by the way, when we look at ingestion rates. So that first paper that I told you that we
were working on on the regulatory framework, this is in peer review right now. You look at all of these
global frameworks, U.S., UK, EU, and you say, is ingestion acknowledged at the regulatory
level for lip products? So we know we put them on. We flavor them like food. We're
eating them, does the regulation acknowledge, we will acknowledge that you eat 0.05 grams of this a day, right?
Most regulatory frameworks don't even acknowledge ingestion. So think about that before you buy a
product. That product was not screened for ingestion. And that is what is happening throughout the
day, especially as you reply it over and over and over again. That's the blind spot. Then you have
the second level of the blind spot, which is it's lip vermilion. It's not regular skin. So what's
going through this into our bloodstreams? I guess for people that, like, have a hard time wrapping
their mind around this or why this is such a big deal, imagine the fit parents would throw if a
child's toy company, baby company, like Little Tykes, for example, flavored their plastic
baby toys. Yes. And babies are putting that stuff in their mouth and then, oh, this taste
good. So I'm really just munching on this plastic. Parents would be in an uproar.
Well, I started crying when I saw a clip because you can go on to TikTok now and you can see young girls doing taste tests of lip product that's flavored like a dessert, flavored like a food, flavored like a nostalgic dessert company.
Like Dr. Pepper, Krispy Cream.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you look at what actually is in that product and you realize that you're associating something that's plastic with food and you're making it bright colored.
you're making it like you're flavoring it and you're naming it something like cotton candy or whatever
birthday cake you you have to now then think if it didn't have the flavor in it and it didn't have
that pretty packaging and I just put it in a lump on a plate and I gave someone a spoon would you
eat it but that's what you're doing so kids and this is what I think happened I think back
four or five years ago when when moms you know kids were getting really excited about
about adult skin care. And they were going into these retailers and they were saying, Mommy,
Mommy, I want that mask or I want that cleanser. I want, and teen skin especially was suffering from that.
And so what would happen is, oh, no, you're not allowed to buy that skin care. You're too young for that.
You're only nine. You're only 10. But, Mommy, I want to go to ex-retailer. I want to go to
Sephora. I want to take me. I want to buy something. Well, what can you buy? What's the safest thing?
Oh, that lip gloss flavored like a dessert. No problem. That's why that lip market, I think, is exploding.
the way that it is. So I think it is, you make a really good point, moms, moms especially,
when they hear this, are going to be mortified because they're thinking, oh, I did the right thing.
I didn't get that skincare product that is going to ruin my daughter's skin. Yeah, the moms are
bargaining with the 11-year-olds who are wanting drunk elephant skincare. And they're like,
that's insane. I'm not doing that. Here, you can pick a lip gloss out. Correct. I mean,
it's benign. Like, just pick out. It's cherry flavored. How bad can it be? And then you look at it.
basically. Yeah. And so I think that it's a day of reckoning now because we are smarter today. We have
sharing of information today that we didn't have 10, 20, 30 years ago. And now is the time to really look at
what is in the lip product before you put it on your mouth or you give it to your kid to put it on their
mouths. So if regulators had to rewrite lip product rules from scratch today, what should immediately
change. Two things. One, we have to acknowledge that, like, just like eye, eye products, like in the
US, they're looking at how sensitive this mucosal membrane is for the eye. We're regulating more
specifically for eye products. How are we not doing that for lip? So one, you have to just
acknowledge it is a different type of skin to the rest of your face. Today, we don't make that
distinction. Anywhere in the world, this isn't just a US problem. We treat lip skin like dermal
skin, which has got a barrier. It's got hair. It's got sebitious glands. It's built to take things,
to keep things out of the skin. This is a sponge for a reason. It's your mouth. It's meant to
take things in. So one, I think regulators need to potentially relook at the lip biology. And we just,
we have a patent pending on the lip model at the lip service alliance so that we can fund this research.
I could have been a
bagillionaire and had this as my own patent.
I want the lip service alliance
to be the engine that funds the research.
And so this lip patent model for us is exciting
because if people want to use the lip model
to test on lip skin,
so like I don't know if you know about this,
but we do not condone animal testing whatsoever.
So right now when you want to test a cosmetic,
you use a dermal test.
It's actually owned by a very,
big company. And anytime you want to test on dermal skin, you use this laboratory skin model. It's
human tissue. It's in a petri dish. And that's how they determine how fast does something go into the
skin. Right. But it's it's dermal skin. It's not the same. It's not the same as the sponge.
So we created the world's first lip model so that we can really look at how these specific
ingredients get absorbed into lip tissue. So that's the first thing. We need to understand that
and acknowledge that lip tissue is different to the rest of the face, the rest of the body.
It's not like foot cream, right? We shouldn't be regulated like foot cream. And the second is that
we have to do better, more modern studies on how much people are actually eating, right? So do you
remember back in the early 2000s, there was that whole lead lip scare and lipstick?
No. I would have been too little to know. Oh, my!
God, okay, of course.
Tell us.
Okay, so back in the early 2000s, it was said, oh, my God, they found lead in lipstick.
Yeah?
Lead contamination in lipstick.
I mean, today, they're even finding cadmium.
They're finding all kinds of heavy.
It's the synthetic dyes.
It's because there's a contamination issue, right?
That's why it's meant to be regulated.
Synthetic dyes are meant to be regulated.
But the reason why that story went away is because they rely.
the industry, the media, they rely on old studies from the early 2000s that say, well, if you're a
woman, you're really only putting on lipstick twice a day. And if you're only putting it on twice a
day, you're only going to be taking in about 0.05 grams of it. So the amount of lead you're taking
in is negligible. It's a 30-year-old study. So now you go to the modern usage rates. So the law
needs to acknowledge how often are people applying lip products? How often are you applying it? So how
often, how many grams are you actually taking in a day? Well, that exposure rate is what needs,
you need to A, acknowledge that you're eating this stuff off your lips and B, have an understanding
of how much is actually getting, you know, taken into the body. There are no regulations in the world
that are doing that. You know what changed the way I think about cleaning products? Realizing that a clean
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So when do your peer-reviewed papers come out? And then once they come out, what happens?
So right now, they're at what we call a high-impact journal. So there are going to be a lot of eyeballs when this thing gets published. And these two papers, I would say in the next two, three, maybe four weeks, we're at a weird time because a lot of the people who are peer-reviewing, they're professors. They're people who are reviewing papers right now. It's a very busy, busy time. So we might look at next three weeks, next four weeks. And when this happens,
And this comes out and you're able to speak publicly about now we're connecting all the docs, right?
Like in one paper you see here's the data of how often somebody typically applies a lip product.
Here are how regulations regulate lip products.
There's a gap.
I'm hoping what that does is it makes all the brands in the world, all the industrial ingredient manufacturers in the world want to say,
do you know what? We didn't see this. Now we need to do something about it. Let's join the lip service
alliance as a nonprofit lip service. I say lip service because it's like surface level safety doesn't
make sense for lips. It's no more lip service for this. We need to treat lips with the respect that they
deserve. They're a portal into the body. They are a sponge. They are a very sensitive part of the body.
And we are eating things right off of them all day long. So let's make the change as quickly as possible.
The very minimum, I'm hoping, because that particular paper, the very minimum, it clocks this trend.
And I want to say trend, but it's been around for the gourmand flavoring of these lip products.
If you're going to flavor something like food, we should have some understanding of making sure that people know that it's not food.
There should be some warning on labels.
This is not a food product or, you know, I don't know.
but flavoring something like a well-known dessert,
you just assume as a consumer that it's okay to go in, to lick it.
I mean, that's what's happening on TikTok.
Remember really early 2000?
I do remember this because I would have been in elementary school.
Well, I'm way older than you, so definitely I'll remember.
I thought this is the coolest thing ever is Jessica Simpson came out with these dessert sprays.
I used to work with, yes.
Okay, her line of like sprays and you could like lift your arm.
It was like, let's talk about, let's talk about it.
So Randy Schinder is the founder, was the founder of that.
And she was so ahead of her time, lickable.
It was lickable, it was lickable, edible, lickable.
And it was that food associated.
I would say that hers were definitely closer to what you would want, but even there, like I say, titanium dioxide,
and a lot of these things that you would find in products.
Nowadays, we know things that we didn't know back then.
So I think that what I would say.
is food grade certified in addition to cosmetic grade certified is where you want to be.
That's why we created yam.
There's so many things.
I'm like thinking of other categories too, like lube, for example.
Okay, like they make edible lube.
So you're ingesting that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what's in that?
Like, at your average drugstore or whatever, like that's got to be disgusting too.
I haven't really looked into that.
But one of the people that we are folding into this whole lip service alliance comes from that industry.
where feminine hygiene products for women's tissue,
because the tissue down there is just as absorbent,
and that's another area that needs to evolve as quickly as possible.
I hope that this starts a trend
where we actually look at the fact that that tissue absorbs things.
Well, the way that this is going to get massive attention
once these, I'm just predicting,
once these papers come out so that the brands see it
and actually take notice,
what's got to happen is big media companies,
I mean, the Atlantic and New York Post and all these people, New York Times, they need to be writing stories about these papers.
And then it's blowing up now. It's viral on social media. Everybody's sharing it. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And then that's when like they start making noise. And then the beauty brands are going to be like, oh, no, the consumer is awake.
Right. And so that's, so when I discovered this blind spot, what I didn't want to do was just take to social media and go, oh, my God, you're not going to believe this. I thought Clean made such a mask.
of people's minds, nobody knew what to buy anymore. If somebody says, clean is not a regulated word.
So if I go to one place and I say, what does clean mean? It could mean one thing. Like, I can tell
you, hand on heart, I was shocked that some clean brands still have plasticizing ingredients
in their lip products. I'm like, how does that work? It's because it's a cosmetic. It's a topical.
I think that once this thing hits, I hope that what will happen is people will see an opportunity.
When we look at business, what has beauty been banging on about for all these years?
Innovation, innovation, innovation.
Well, what's real innovation is if you can give me a food grade certified ingredient that performs like a cosmetic grade ingredient.
So, for example, at Yom Beauty, we look at things.
like film formers, so things that are plastic that make the product last long on your lips.
Okay?
When you look at those plastic ingredients, we look to nature in food and we say, is there anything
that we can see in the food industry that kind of behaves the same way that we can borrow from?
And where it's been really hard is to you go to these food ingredient manufacturers and you say,
we really love product X.
We want to use it in our cosmetics, but it's a different regulatory.
system. So now I have to jump through hoops to see if that company can now also get the same
ingredient certified to be cosmetic grade. Because at the end of the day, I'm making a lip product.
It has to be cosmetic grade. So the innovation for these ingredient companies around the world,
and I hope people are listening because this is going to be a huge opportunity for the big
ingredient companies of the world. Make certified food grade ingredients that can also be
cosmetic great ingredients specifically for lip. So for example, you go and buy your smoothie,
right? Your beautiful bright red smoothie. Chances are the color in that smoothie comes from a
beetroot, right? Or red cabbage. Right. I put meat powder, organic beetroot powder in my smoothie.
There you go. And it makes it pink. And so in the food regulations in the U.S., you can use that
beetroot powder, no problem, to color any natural product. So let's say you want to make a
a red cookie and you say I use organic beetroot as the red color in completely legal.
This is going to blow your mind.
This is going to blow your mind.
When I discovered this, I thought, this doesn't make any sense.
And this is why the lip service alliance has to roll up its sleeves and start helping the industry to change.
The FDA says that in order to make a cosmetic, you have to use their pre-approved dyes because
they're trying to protect the public. I get where this is coming from. It's really, it's a good thing. The heart's
in the right place, right? But if you want to use a food derived, food certified color for color in a cosmetic,
it's illegal in the U.S. because it's not a pre-approved on the list of synthetic dyes that they say,
here, you can use one of these. You can use it for color in a smoothie. You cannot use it for color.
in a cosmetic, that same beetroot powder. Like, make that make sense. Right. Make that make sense.
So we have to grandfather in as quickly as possible, these beetroot powders, et cetera, that we can
use in lip products today. They're highly pigmented as a color. Now, this is the weird bit. If I say
I'm using it as an extract for antioxidants, legal. I can use it. But just I can't say it's the thing
that's coloring it. So besides Yom Beauty, what other brands do you think are doing it right,
totally safe, this is okay to use? I don't know of any brand that does cosmetic grade and food
grade certified together for a full complete formula. I'm not saying that there aren't safer
and there aren't brands that have really high integrity that use only food derived ingredients,
which is different, right? Food derived.
means you've taken it from a food. But here's the difference. And a lot of people don't know this.
When you say it's cosmetic grade and you say something is food grade, it's not just about where it comes
from or how it's, it's, it's how it's processed. It's how it's stored. It's how it's made. It's whether or not
there's a certain level of cleanliness or good manufacturing processes when it's on a line. So if I make
a cosmetic grade ingredient, it has a different manufacturing standard to when I'm saying it's a food
grade ingredient, right? Right. So the chemicals that are used to extract or, you know, commercialize
that product are going to be different in a food grade product. That's why food grade certified for me,
if it's going on my mouth, is so important. So it's not just derived from beet or it's not just
derived from coconut or derived from, you know, beeswax. It's also that it's processed in a food
grade manner, which is a level of purity.
This episode is fun because it's like breaking beauty news.
I mean, this is just massive.
Where can people follow along to see the updates on this?
We are launching Yom Beauty as the proof of concept that we can do this, food grade certified
and cosmetic grade certified.
We're launching on yombeauty.com, and that's YOM because yom.
It's like, it's so yum.
It's yom.
We needed like a new standard for it.
So you can go to yombeautombeautom.com and that is for the actual product.
And if you want to follow along on what we're going to be doing with regulations,
as a founder of the Lipservice Alliance, you can follow me on Instagram.
It's simple meet as in, hi, nice to meet you.
Laura, D-G, that's my last name is so long.
So it's just D-I-G-I, L-A-U-R-A-D-I-I.
And the L-Service Alliance will have its own website.
And I intentionally did not fully form that right now because I wanted it to be an open invitation for all the brands to join.
So like the board of directors and the brands that are founding partners, it's still an open invitation.
I didn't want to just create this organization and close the doors and go well.
You know, I want people to join as quickly as possible.
So I'm hoping that the L'Oreal's of the world, I'm hoping that the Lanesges of the world,
I'm hoping that Rhodes, you know, calls me up and says, oh, we didn't see this.
We'd like to join.
And we'd like to figure out how to shift this as quickly as possible.
Because the truth is, no matter where you are in the world, it's not just a U.S. thing.
It's not just an EU thing.
It's not just a China thing.
I mean, it's global.
We are classing lip products as topicals.
And we should, at this point, in.
in history we should know better.
If you could offer one remedy to heal us at culture, it could be physically, emotionally,
or spiritually, what would it be?
It would be.
And I'm speaking from experience because I went through a very, very harrowing health scare.
We are inundated with fear today.
You wake up, afraid, you go to sleep afraid, you look at your socials, you get afraid,
you go to you're in the car you're afraid we are a fear-based culture and what i can tell you is that's a very
low frequency to be in and anytime you make a decision just stop and ask you ask yourself are you making
this decision out of fear because a hundred times at a hundred times i can guarantee you that decision
is the wrong one if you make any decision in any part of your day out of fear including choosing
your lip products, then you're making the wrong decision. You have to make it from a very positive,
courageous, I don't want to say fear less, but don't do something.
It's more informed. There's a difference between being informed and being fearful.
Yeah. So don't be afraid. There's nothing afraid. Like, even in setting this, this whole thing in
motion, it is very ambitious to say to the whole beauty industry, we got this wrong.
And we have to change this overnight because we are finding things in lip products.
That is to the average person, that would be like, okay, I'd rather not spend my time after I've been sick for four years spending my time doing that.
It's, it can be scary.
But you have to go, is it the right thing?
Is this the right thing to do?
I think everyone can agree.
This is the right thing to do.
And we have to be courageous and come at it from a much higher vibration.
So no fear.
Don't make any decisions based on fear.
and if you feel the fear, work through it, get rid of it, and then make your decision.
Loved this episode, was on the edge of my seat the entire time you flew all the way here from the
UK to do the show, which is so incredible.
So guys, just gas her up in the comments.
It means so much that you came to share.
I know this is the first show or one of the first shows that you're sharing this.
You are literally, the first one that I did was because I was in L.A.
And it's a dear friend of mine, and he's amazing.
Darren Oly and I don't know.
Oh, yes.
Love Darren.
Darren. I need to get Darren on the show.
Oh my God, you should. He's amazing. He's never been on the show.
You have to tell him. I will tell him. And he was amazing. And all I can say is I appreciate you so much.
Because when I watch your podcast and I see what you're doing, you are fearless.
Thank you. You are fearless. And that's when I say don't make any decisions based on a fear. I wasn't talking to you.
You definitely don't do that. And I want to thank every person who's listening who will find me, follow me, support me,
the more people I have behind me, the less anyone will try to intimidate me to stop.
Yeah.
That's the most important.
Let's all band together and say we deserve better.
Our kids deserve better.
Moms deserve.
Women deserve better.
Yep.
That's right.
Laura, this was a dynamite interview.
Thank you so much for coming on Culture Apothecate.
Thank you so much.
I love that Laura emphasized that the takeaway from this episode should be awareness, not panic.
Would love to know what you thought about this episode.
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This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice.
Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care.
Malix Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.