True Body Soap: Review and Giveaway

UPDATE!

Congratulations to @bonnieboden and @dianaleigh1218 for winning the True Body Soap giveaway!

I’ll get in touch with you on Twitter to arrange the delivery of your gift.

Thank you very much to everybody who participated, and to True Body Soap for sponsoring this giveaway

This week, I’m hosting a giveaway of True Body Soap. I’m giving away two packs with one three-bar box and one facial soap from True Body Soap. To qualify, here’s what you have to do:

1.  Follow me on Twitter.

2. Tweet the following message:

Find out what to avoid when choosing a soap–and why http://bit.ly/eg7Jui via @lexirodrigo

3. Watch this post for the announcement of the winner on Friday, December 17, 2010!

Using random.org, I’m going to pick two winners from among those who’ve followed these instructions. Good luck

Important Note:  This giveaway is open only to residents of USA and Canada.

Video Review

Want to learn more about True Body Soap? Watch my video review of the soap and then read the interview below of Janice Shade, creator of True Body Soap.

1. You describe True Body Soap as being “100% natural.” What exactly do you mean by that (given that that term is used very loosely nowadays for marketing purposes).

You’re right – “natural” is an over-used and often mis-used term. Since there’s no regulation governing the use of “organic” or even “natural” for personal care/cosmetic products, it’s easy for companies to get away with loosey-goosey claims.

For us, natural means using ingredients that are derived from nature and minimally processed. This last part is most important because pretty much everything comes from nature at some point; the difference is how much processing (aka human manipulation) an ingredient goes through. While some processing is necessary – for instance, we couldn’t have soap if someone didn’t mix water, some kind of oil, and lye together – we’re trying to keep it to a minimum so that the ingredients don’t stray too far from the form you’d find in nature.

There’s a self-regulatory organization called the Natural Products Association (www.npainfo.org) that’s doing good work trying to fill in where there’s no government oversight. They’ve got pretty strict standards for what can be called natural and companies can apply to register their products with the NPA. All of our ingredients meet NPA standards and we’re in the process of applying to be a member.

2. What ingredients are commonly found in regular soaps that we should avoid, and why?

Please, please, please stay away from triclosan. It’s found in many antibacterial soaps and is a known hormone disruptor. It also contributes to making bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Plain old soap and warm water are perfectly sufficient to kill harmful bacteria so all those anti-bacterial products are literally overkill.And they might just “overkill” us in the long run if we can’t find a way to stop these super-germs from evolving.

Fragrance is another scary thing. There’s a loophole in labeling requirements that says a product’s fragrance is proprietary and therefore the package does not have to list the ingredients that make up that fragrance. So even a so-called natural product could just list “Natural Fragrance” as an ingredient but who knows what’s really in there.

According to a recent post on ScienceDaily.com citing a study by the Univ. of Washington: “Widely used fragranced products — including those that claim to be ‘green’ — give off many chemicals that are not listed on the label, including some that are classified as toxic.” Check out our TrueBlog where we have several posts on this topic.   And the full article on ScienceDaily.com can be found on the TrueBody Products Facebook page.

3. Where can we buy True Body Soap?

We’re in over 300 stores across the country as well as several online retailers, including Whole Foods, Fred Meyer and Alice.com. Check out our handy-dandy store finder on our website.

4. Do you have any plans for making variants of True Body Soap?

Yes!  As a matter of fact, we just launched TrueBody Facial Bar recently.  It starts with the same basic formula as our Body Bar and adds three moisturizing/anti-oxidant ingredients.  The ingredients are shea butter, buriti oil and polyglycerides from sunflower oil. (again, all ingredients meet NPA standards).

Our intern tried it for shaving and he LOVES it.  Check out his video on our Facebook page.

We’re starting to research ideas for other new products but the best ideas come from all the folks out there who want/need/use the products.  Would love to get suggestions from your readers. Please let me know if you have any other questions or need clarification.  Thanks for putting out such a great blog.  Keep up the good work!