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General Wellbeing

Postby WWordsworth » Sat Jan 16, 2021 8:53 pm

General wellbeing and general discussions



My new slippers have just arrived from M&S.
The label states they are suitable for vegans.

I wasn't planning on eating them; maybe I should drink champagne from them?

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Re: Veganuary

Postby herbidacious » Sun Jan 17, 2021 12:08 pm

Part of me thinks that labelling all manner of things vegan is just cashing in on the trendiness, but I suppose it's helpful. I just discovered that my slippers, bought from Fat Face a year and a half ago aren't. (It says contains non-textile parts of animal origin. Hopefully not the little furry bobbles...)
I am assuming that vegan toiletries and cosmetics are also 'cruelty free'.
Again it would have been nice to have had such labelling earlier. I suppose it might have put people off things at one point. Vegans used to have a very bad (slightly loony and extreme) press. I really do appreciate the V sign on foods after years of scrutinizing ingredients. (Still have to do this in non-UK supermarkets.) This is less easy than it was once, and next time I go to Wing Yip I shall have to take a magnifying glass.
I have had a couple of vegan ready meals in the last few weeks, brought home my husband… the best things are the ones that don’t try to copy (cheese)!

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Earthmaiden » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:19 pm

It begs the question of why people want to be vegan. I assume it is usually either because they don't like the mass breeding of animals for meat and animal products for welfare reasons or because of the knock-on impact on the environment - or both. To start by eating plants for a month is good introduction but after that, for anyone who is serious, it follows that they will want to avoid all animal products and I applaud M&S for their labelling.

I do, of course, wonder if new, 'trendy' vegans will follow this through properly and avoid plastic and other environmentally harmful things as well. It can be done but requires a lot of research to understand - there are so many factors to consider in making the best choices.

By the by, I was given a bottle of 'Original Source' shower cream. It is a cheap product made by Cussons and claims to be vegan and says that '82 sunrises help make every bottle' with no explanation as to what that means. It is scented with vanilla and raspberry fruit extract. Both vanilla and raspberries are luxury foods to me, maybe the fruit extract is a byproduct of something else which would be otherwise wasted. I hope so. I looked at the website and clearly they can substantiate their claims.They highlight the 'naturalness' of their products by explaining the lengths they go to to get the mint oil for one of the fragrances on offer. I like nice fragrances as much as anyone else and if this is Fairtrade (which it doesn't say it is) then it is helping a community. I do wonder though if the terrain would also be suited to growing nourishing food. Mint oil as an ingredient seems fine but should all this effort be going into scenting cheap shower cream? To me, all these questions are part of becoming a vegan. https://www.originalsource.co.uk/our-gu ... he-source/

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Seatallan » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:53 pm

Must say I do love Original Source products. I've one of their shower gels on the go at the moment (lavender & geranium as it happens). I used to pick them up from Homesense in the days when we lived near one. Booths stock them locally and I grab one if I see it on special offer.
Food, felines and fells (in no particular order)

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Stokey Sue » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:53 pm

I think it is difficult with labelling to know when to start and when to stop if you want to avoid anything from animal derivatives through gluten and dairy to sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) (typos removed)

The point surely is that ethical vegans object to all animal products used to make goods for human use - I don’t see that the scale of production comes into it at all, if it’s animal it’s not acceptable. There has been a Vegetarian Shoe Shop in Brighton for a very long time, I think around 40 years

And it’s not always obvious that a vegetarian product is not vegan, for example some vegetable bouillon powders contain sodium caseinate (milk protein) which seems to be there to make the granules a good texture and easy to handle

I wouldn’t use Original Source because I don’t like those strong fragrances but I can’t because the foaming agent is SLS which gives me spectacular contact dermatitis, a few products are now flashed SLS free but more could be and I wish they were, as far as I know it’s in most of the Simple range, but Aveeno is SLS free - but not flashed so I have to read the ingredients in detail

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Pampy » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:05 pm

I too like Original Source products. They're available at most supermarkets near me.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Earthmaiden » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:36 pm

Don't get me wrong, Original Source products have excellent labelling and tick a lot of boxes that other mainstream products don't.

I would still like to know what '82 sunrises help make every bottle' really means!

I do feel that anyone interested in animal welfare and environmental concerns is probably interested in the ethical use of 'growing' land, travel miles, water use and Fairtrade schemes as well. Veganuary is a start which hopefully leads to greater concern over the other related issues.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Suffs » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:39 pm

Today’s Food Programme was interesting ... “What to eat to Save the Planet”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rbp7

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Pampy » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:02 pm

Earthmaiden wrote:I would still like to know what '82 sunrises help make every bottle' really means!


Could it be the time it takes to grow the raspberries?

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Earthmaiden » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:27 pm

Possibly!

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Re: Veganuary

Postby jeral » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:28 pm

Earthmaiden wrote:...[clip]...
I do wonder though if the terrain would also be suited to growing nourishing food. Mint oil as an ingredient seems fine but should all this effort be going into scenting cheap shower cream? To me, all these questions are part of becoming a vegan.

I'd have thought that bad use of land was a moral issue for everyone. However, if people want "all natural" cosmetic products the ingredients have to come from somewhere. Even unused by products can be returned to the earth somehow, but much less so if changed at fundamental level by mixing with chemicals thus becoming non-biodegradable.

Re WWordsworth's non-vegan slippers. Glue? Animal or fish based maybe. If so, I imagine its use would be better for the planet than chemical chain glues. Vegans have to, or do, ignore that 99% of the slippers might be evil-for-the-planet petrochemical based fabric and sole. Can't win 'em all eh?

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Suffs » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:43 pm

jeral wrote:
Earthmaiden wrote:...[clip]...
I do wonder though if the terrain would also be suited to growing nourishing food. Mint oil as an ingredient seems fine but should all this effort be going into scenting cheap shower cream? To me, all these questions are part of becoming a vegan.

I'd have thought that bad use of land was a moral issue for everyone. However, if people want "all natural" cosmetic products the ingredients have to come from somewhere. Even unused by products can be returned to the earth somehow, but much less so if changed at fundamental level by mixing with chemicals thus becoming non-biodegradable.

Re WWordsworth's non-vegan slippers. Glue? Animal or fish based maybe. If so, I imagine its use would be better for the planet than chemical chain glues. Vegans have to, or do, ignore that 99% of the slippers might be evil-for-the-planet petrochemical based fabric and sole. Can't win 'em all eh?



That's why today's Food Prog that I linked to was so interesting.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Pampy » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:46 pm

jeral wrote: However, if people want "all natural" cosmetic products the ingredients have to come from somewhere. Even unused by products can be returned to the earth somehow, but much less so if changed at fundamental level by mixing with chemicals thus becoming non-biodegradable.

If the "natural" ingredients were mixed with chemicals, surely they'd no longer be natural? Or if the chemicals were naturally occurring, then there shouldn't be a problem returning them to their natural environment.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby scullion » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:54 pm

it depends what you mean by chemicals - isn't everything made from chemicals?
i make solid shampoo from chemicals - they are mostly extracts from coconut oil.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Stokey Sue » Sun Jan 17, 2021 5:10 pm

As a one time biochemist the concept that there’s a fixed difference between “natural” and “chemical” bemuses me

But people will argue that there’s a difference between naturally occurring vitamin C and commercially synthesised ascorbic acid. If the analysis can’t tell the difference then it’s really unlikely your body can, since we learned about the effects of mirror image molecules on enzymes

Where it makes a difference is where the natural product is not fully purified and contains a mixture of molecules, which may have advantages over the single one, an example we’d all recognise is the difference between a variety of natural vanilla extracts and pure vanillin, though vanillin will be the predominant molecule in all

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Earthmaiden » Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:30 pm

As a non-chemist I have no idea what most ingredients in many cleaning or beauty products are. I take their word for it that they are reasonably honest in their labelling (such as if claiming no parabeens then there aren't any).

The product we've been discussing with 82 sunrises and raspberries has this as the ingredient list: Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Chloride, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Glycerin, Vanilla Planifolia (Vanilla) Fruit Extract, Rubus Idaeus (Raspberry) Fruit Extract, Polyquaternium-7, Parfum, Sodium Benzoate, Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate, Lactic Acid, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, C11-15 Pareth-7, C11-15 Pareth-40, Diethylamino Hydroxybenzoyl Hexyl Benzoate, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Phenoxyethanol, Benzoic Acid, Dehydroacetic Acid, Ethylhexylglycerin, Citric Acid, Propylene Glycol Dicaprylate/Dicaprate, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate, CI 14700, CI 42090.

I wonder how many of us not trained in that field really know what they all are and what they do?

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Suffs » Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:40 pm

What im trying to avoid are petrochemicals ... there’s a huge amount involved in foodstuffs and cosmetics.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Stokey Sue » Sun Jan 17, 2021 7:07 pm

Well looking at that lot in Earthmaiden’s Original Source - main ingredient is sodium laureth/lauroyl sulphate which is made from petroleum, palm oil or coconut oil heavily processed, so not “natural”. It’s a cleansing/foaming agent that can provoke skin reactions in people sensitive to it

Cocamidopropyl betaine is another cleansing/foaming substance that also has a good texture for this sort of product. It is made from coconut oil but too chemically processed to count as natural

I have to know about these 2 for reasons of allergy rather than chemistry

Of the rest, the fruit extracts are obvious, Parfum could be almost anything but will probably be synthetic, the last 2 are colours indicated by their CI codes these are both synthetic chemicals, but some coded colours are naturally occurring I think. The rest I’m pretty sure are mainly synthetic, apart from xanthan which is from cultured bacteria, I could probably work out some structures but I’m not sure what most of them are doing individually though together they are obviously making it the right texture, controlling pH, preventing bacteria and mould from growing

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Earthmaiden » Sun Jan 17, 2021 7:42 pm

Interesting, Sue. Thank you. Clearly such products have already been developed from something worse and that is a good thing but I would find it hard to believe that a huge outfit such as Cussons could/would produce an inexpensive product with ingredients which were as pure and natural and ethical as they would really like us to believe. That said, the average person will settle for the best they can afford and this at least ticks some boxes. I wonder how many people care too much about those it doesn't.

I've just listened to the podcast Suffs, thanks for sharing. They are probably right that carbon footprint is a good place to start.

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Re: Veganuary

Postby Pepper Pig » Sun Jan 17, 2021 7:50 pm

Do Cussons still produce Imperial Leather? What was that name all about?

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