What springs to mind when you hear the word “preservative”?
Probably a scary sounding chemical with a long name.
It just makes most people think:
“eww, keep that nasty stuff away from me”.
But at the end of this post, I will show you this is not entirely well founded.
Firstly, why do we put preservatives in products? For example in make-up and creams.
There are 2 reasons
- To stop the product breaking down and becoming useless
- To stop bugs growing in the product
It’ that simple.
Product break down is a waste of our money. So we would like to prevent that.
But sometimes when the product breaks down, it can actually produce dangerous by-products;
And we definitely want to avoid that.
However, preventing bugs growing is by far the most crucial role for preservatives.
For the simple reason that microbes are a threat to human health.
So when a manufacturer adds preservatives they need to prove that this preservatives keeps microbial growth to an acceptable limit;
Up until the expiry date of the product.
This is why you should NEVER use a product after the expiry date. Because the manufacturer does not guarantee the product has a safe level of bugs anymore.
Having said that, there are some nasty preservatives that you SHOULD avoid.
Till next time