There’s a lot right about this rising personal care trend, from leveraging the simplicity we’re craving in beauty and nutrition to capitalizing on hot ingredients that cross food, supplements and personal care categories.
There’s a lot right about this rising personal care trend, from leveraging the simplicity we’re craving in beauty and nutrition to capitalizing on hot ingredients that cross food, supplements and personal care categories.
Some things just make sense and, oddly enough, beauty products fit for cavemen is one of them. From deodorant to skin care, natural personal care is positioning itself as Paleo … to which some of you may say, Me don’t get it.
But, there’s a lot right about this rising personal care trend, from leveraging the simplicity we’re craving in beauty and nutrition to capitalizing on hot ingredients that we're finding in food, supplements and personal care categories. The increasing interest in Paleo beauty represents how this diet is more than just about the foods we eat: Here at Delicious Living, we've defined Paleo as one of several food tribes, which means that it's a complete lifestyle emphasizing a back-to-basics approach to health and wellness.
Before I dig more into the Paleo beauty thing, let's have a little refresher on Paleo. Modeled after the primitive man’s diet, the increasingly popular nutritional plan known as the Paleolithic diet is based on eating practices of an era that ended approximately 10,000 years ago. This way of eating—and living—focuses on lean meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, while eliminating grains, sugars, legumes, dairy, and of course, anything processed.
Paleo beauty products are in line with this concept, formulating with ingredients available thousands of years ago. But they also emphasize different deliveries and applications that we may not be used to. Fundamentally, these products are the right fit for those of us who want to purify our beauty regimens. Often they contain just a few simple, easy-to-read ingredients, and sometimes they're even edible. While much of this trend is intuitive, some of the products I’ve seen—such as The Dirt toothpaste—do require us to rethink the experience of applying or using a product. This brushing “powder,” for example, cleans teeth with ingredients including bentonite clay, organic cinnamon and baking soda.
And other products, such as the new FatFace, require us to think about ingredients in new ways. This skin care line takes the “nose to tail” philosophy (using all parts of the animal) into the beauty space by formulating with tallow—rendered beef fat—from grass-fed cows. The company emphasizes that fat can be your friend, and in this case your skin’s friend.
Along the same lines, collagen—one of the nutricosmetic industry’s most research-backed ingredients—is a natural fit for Paleo consumers. Used for joint and bone health, in addition to skin, hair and nail health, it has become a mainstay in the CrossFit community and satisfies the Paleo criteria, sourced from bovine.
Beyond beauty products that fit the Paleo lifestyle, the Paleo way of eating can support a healthy glow by focusing on eliminating processed foods from your diet and ditching sugar, white flour and other beauty villains. Whether or not Paleo beauty speaks to you, I think we can all agree that taking a more purified, simplified approach to our beauty regimens is anything but antiquated.
Does Paleo beauty make sense, or is it a trend that should stay with the cavemen?
