Delicious Living's 2013 Beauty & Body Awards: 40 best natural products

What makes a winner

Sorting through hundreds of beauty products may be fun—but choosing 40 winners from a record- breaking number of submissions isn’t easy. With natural and organic personal care sales up an impressive 8 percent last year, our fourth annual awards were more competitive than ever. Beyond excelling in purity and integrity—essential for any Delicious Living winner— these innovative natural beauty formulations deliver the highest performance yet. Among them, you’ll find upgraded time-tested ingredients and improved honest labeling—just two of many reasons these products top our natural beauty list.

Breakthrough Company: Veria ID

Personalized herbal products like Tighten Up Refining Toner (for oily-skinned kaphas) and Utterly Quenched Hand & Body Lotion (for dry-skinned vatas) give the age-old healing concept Ayurveda an accessible twist. Veria’s Ayurvedic supplements (Veria SO) further connect beauty and wellness.

BRÖÖ Craft Beer Body & Hair Care

This fresh company uses creative branding and an underappreciated old-school hair care remedy (yup, beer) to deliver totally unique hair products that make locks feel silky smooth.

Classic Product: Desert Essence Organic Jojoba Oil

This luscious product debuted in ’78 but is equally relevant 35 years later with jojoba oil—a time-tested natural moisturizer. Plus, today it boasts the USDA Organic seal.

Aura Cacia Essential Oils

This mission-driven company continues to lead the way in sustainable sourcing with its dedication to fair trade and its own Well Earth ethical-sourcing program.

Industry Influencer: DO Naturals

Dolphin Organics’ innovative labeling clearly indicates which elements are natural, organic, and synthetic. The company’s new DO Naturals tween line strives to educate young girls by succinctly listing ingredients’ origins and function. Simple yet brilliant.

W.S. Badger Co.

We continue to give props to this company for its safe-cosmetics advocacy and mineral sunscreen advancements.

Hair care: Andalou Naturals Age Defying Thinning Hair Treatment

This therapeutic system (shampoo, conditioner, and scalp intensive) proves how far natural products have come in offering real solutions to common beauty woes. Its star ingredients, argan stem cells, revitalize dormant scalp cells and aging hair follicles to boost thinning locks.

Giovanni 2chic Avocado & Olive Oil Ultra-Moist Deep Moisture Hair Mask:

Giovanni combines two favorite simply beauty ingredients (avocado and olive oil) in a sophisticated, salon-worthy hair care line, including this uberhydrating deep conditioner.

New Product: Reserveage Organics Ultra Collagen Booster

This supercharged version of our 2012 Best Beauty Supplement combines skin-firming BioCell collagen; Reserveage’s antioxidant-rich resveratrol blend; and fruit and veggie beauty complex Dermaval.

Vermont Soap Green Gold Organic Herbal Moisturizer

This truly natural skin care remedy earned USDA Organic certification and is built on nutrient-dense hempseed oil.

Hand or Nail Care: Mineral Fusion Nail Polish

Fiery Lava, Sunkissed orange-pink, Amethyst purple ... choosing from 30 nontoxic colors is the adult equivalent of staring into a new box of crayons. Vegan and free from formaldehyde, toluene, camphor, and dibutyl phthalate.

Deep Steep Hand Scrub

These rejuvenating scrubs use sea salt and shea butter to make you feel like you just left the salon.

Value: EveryDay Coconut Super Hydrating Body Lotion

New from the makers of Alaffia, this committed fair-trade line offers more for less. The base is nutrient-dense coconut water, and its key moisturizer is coconut’s fatty-acid-rich oil.

Natralia Dry Skin Lotion

This lotion’s truly unscented formula features Xeradin—a highly concentrated moisturizer made from clary sage—and costs only $9.99.

Oral Care: VitaCare Chia Mint Sensitive Whitening toothpaste

Last year’s Best Oral Care winner recently added a whitening line with potassium nitrate to protect sensitive teeth and gums. Like its original items, this new product also contains plant extracts, xylitol, and cool mint.

Tom’s of Maine Botanically Bright Whitening Toothpaste

Brush up your oral care routine with this SLS-free product's short and sweet ingredient list that includes bacteria-fighting bee propolis and peppermint oil, plus stevia for extra sweetness. Even without SLS, this product accomplishes an excellent mouthfeel and high performance.

Makeup Product: Jane Iredale Zap & Hide Blemish Concealer

This innovative two-sided stick hides imperfections with plant-based pigments and offers a longer-term solution by “zapping” blemishes with antiseptic and anti-inflamma- tory botanicals, including algae extract and myrrh oil.

Larénim Mineral Diamond Girl Glossy Lip Colour

These blends of fruit, flower, and seed extracts come in va-va-voom hues. Kiss-worthy most definitively.

Men's Product: Bulldog Natural Skincare Original Shave Gel

This U.K. company gets men to care about personal care with fun, masculine graphics and an unintimidating approach to ingredients. This shaving staple contains eight essential oils, aloe vera, jojoba, and konjac mannan.

Organic Homme 3 Cool Down Moisturizer

This manly moisturizer features a plant-based, function-first organic ingredient combo.

Body Moisturizer: Nourish Organic Body Lotion

This new USDA Organic brand appeals to health-conscious foodies with a complete line that meets organic food standards. Shea butter, aloe, acaí, and almond feed your skin in a berries-and-cream-like lotion.

SeabuckWonders Himalayan Sea Buckthorn Body Lotion

Want to know how much seabuckthorn is in this lotion? The bright yellow color is the first hint that this moisturizing product contains a high concentration of the highly efficacious berry oil.

Eco Packaging: Weleda Body Lotions

New feel-good body lotions, including Pomegranate Regenerating and Citrus Hydrating, come in an airless bag-inside-bottle system to prevent spoiling—no synthetics required. Bottles are recyclable.

Sororia Organics

This company's Lotka seeded paper wraps luscious coconut milk soaps and supports Nepalese craftspeople.

Beauty Supplement: NeoCell Beauty Bursts

We predict you’ll become as addicted to these beauty chews— in Super Fruit Punch and Fresh Mint Chocolate flavors—as we are. Sweetened with monk fruit, a two-chew serving offers 2,000 mg of skin-firming collagen, plus hyaluronic acid and vitamin C.

Sibu Beauty Sea Buckthorn Cellular Support

Load up on a high omega-7 content with products that rely on sustainable sourcing. Complement your beauty supps with one of many topical seabuckthorn-rich products.

Best Splurge: Suki Face Intensive Nourishing Cream

The spa-worthy price tag is backed by clinical research touting yeast collagen and vitamin C for reducing signs of aging.

BeeAlive Enriching Royal Jelly Crème

This rich yet lightweight blend combines three hive ingredients—royal jelly, propolis, and honey—in one luscious formulation.

Kids Body Care: Mill Creek Botanicals Baby Calendula Cream

Our favorite of these new affordable baby products is the simple, multipurpose calendula cream created for babies’ sensitive skin.

Babytime! By Episencial Soothing Cream

This soothing cream pairs restorative calendula and neem with probiotics—which may ease eczema, according to some research.

GO Ginger Face Cleanser

We’re fans of Ginger People’s ginger chews for better post-meal digestion; now the same company gets our attention with a quirky, bold-looking, ginger-based skin care product that naturally energizes and cleanses skin.

Lily Organics Nourishing Facial Cleanser

This company takes an original and vegan farm-to-bottle approach to natural beauty, sourcing organic ingredients from its own Colorado-based farm.

Best Facial Moisturizer: MyChelle Dermaceuticals Daily Defense Cream SPF 17

This restorative and moisturizing day cream doubles as a lightweight SPF—a must-have for any woman looking to streamline her beauty routine.

Share your favorite natural skin-health secret on our Facebook page to win this product!

Hyalogic Episilk Pure Hyaluronic Acid Serum

This uberhydrating serum contains only two ingredients: water and “nature’s moisture magnet” hyaluronic acid.

Eco Logical Skin Care All Natural Sunscreen Lotion SPF 30+ Face

Boasting a “1” rank from the Environmental Working Group, Eco Logical’s sheer, nontoxic formula incorporates zinc oxide, restorative shea butter, and organic green tea extract. Fragrance free and noncomedogenic, it also won’t clog pores.

We also love: True Natu- ral All Natural Baby & Sensitive Skin Sunscreen Lotion

Job well done to True Natural for this impressive label pedigree: NPA Natural, USDA Biobased, and EWG “1.”

Best Bathroom Staple: Organix-South TheraNeem Triple Neem Care

Ancient Ayurvedic neem is a staple natural ingredient thanks to its range of uses. Now we have another reason to tap the “village pharmacy”: This new product combines neem leaf, bark, and oil in a cooling fix for cuts, bites, and other boo-boos.

We also love: J.R. Watkins Kids’ Juicy Sweet Apple Foaming Hand Soap

This gentle foaming soap in a kid- (and adult-) friendly natural fragrance uses essential oils to cleanse and soothe.

Best Eye Cream: Derma e Evenly Radiant Dark Circle Eye Crème

Wake up bright-eyed with this eye cream made from research-backed ingredients that counter undereye circles and restore skin’s vibrancy.

Dr. Hauschka Regenerating Eye Cream

This formula blends a plethora of plant ingredients, including silica-rich field horsetail.