Author: Sean Elias

Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream: the Glacial Glycoprotein is #29

Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream with Squalane sells three heroes on the jar: 4.5% squalane, a Glacial Glycoprotein, and Pro-Ceramides. Read the label and only one of them holds up by position. Squalane really is the 4th ingredient on the list, and Kiehl’s even prints the percentage — honest placement. But the Glacial Glycoprotein (Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract) is the 29th ingredient, and the Pro-Ceramide (Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine) is the 31st — both sitting well below the preservative line, which means both are almost certainly present in trace amounts. A glacier is on the front of the jar; on the back it is the 29th thing in the tub.

This is the exercise this desk runs on everything: quote the actual ingredient list, then point at where the thing on the front of the bottle really lands. Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream is a good one to run it on because it is one of the most-searched facial creams going — tens of thousands of jars a month move through Amazon alone — and because the jar makes three separate hero claims, which is three chances for the label to agree or disagree with the marketing. Here it does one of each.

What is actually in Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream?

Here is the full ingredient list, quoted verbatim from Kiehl’s listing on Ulta (SKU 2540234, the 0.95 oz size; Ulta notes the larger SKUs share identical ingredient text), read 16 October 2026:

Aqua / Water, Glycerin, Dimethicone, Squalane, Bis-Peg-18 Methyl Ether Dimethyl Silane, Sucrose Stearate, Stearyl Alcohol, Peg-8 Stearate, Myristyl Myristate, Prunus Armeniaca Kernel Oil / Apricot Kernel Oil, Phenoxyethanol, Persea Gratissima Oil / Avocado Oil, Glyceryl Stearate, Cetyl Alcohol, Oryza Sativa Bran Oil / Rice Bran Oil, Olea Europaea Fruit Oil / Olive Fruit Oil, Chlorphenesin, Stearic Acid, Palmitic Acid, Carbomer, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Trisodium Ethylenediamine Disuccinate, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis Oil / Sweet Almond Oil, Xanthan Gum, Ethylhexylglycerin, Sodium Hydroxide, Tocopherol, Glycine Soja Oil / Soybean Oil, Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract, Myristic Acid, Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine, Salicylic Acid, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil / Sunflower Seed Oil, Rosmarinus Officinalis Leaf Extract / Rosemary Leaf Extract, Citric Acid.

Source: Ulta.com, Kiehl’s own retailer listing, read 16 October 2026. That is a list thirty-five entries long. One note on which formula this is: older databases, and the Kiehl’s India site, show Cyclohexasiloxane near the top of this cream. The current US listing does not — it shows Dimethicone at position 3 instead, and that is the version quoted above. If you are checking your own jar, check the panel on it, because formulas get revised.

Nib turns the famous white jar around and starts counting: water, glycerin, dimethicone — and only then the squalane the jar is named for.

Where does the 4.5% squalane actually sit?

At position 4 — and credit where it is due, that is honest. Kiehl’s prints “4.5% Squalane” on the front of the jar, and squalane genuinely turns up fourth, above every oil, wax and botanical in the formula. Squalane is a well-liked emollient: a lightweight, highly stable lipid (here derived from olives) that spreads easily and helps skin feel soft and supple. At position 4 with a declared percentage, this is the opposite of the usual story on this desk, where the marketed active hides near the bottom. The squalane claim is the one that survives reading the list. Hold onto that, because the other two heroes do not fare the same way.

The quieter structural point sits one line above the squalane. Position 3 is Dimethicone — a silicone film-former — and position 5 is a second silicone emollient. So the cream contains at least as much synthetic silicone as it does the squalane it is named for. That is not a knock on silicones: dimethicone is well tolerated and genuinely good at slowing water loss from the skin’s surface. It is simply information that appears nowhere on the front of the jar or in the key-ingredient callouts, and it is worth knowing that a chunk of what makes this cream feel the way it does is silicone, not the botanical lipid on the label.

For once the hero keeps its promise: the squalane really does sit near the top, at number four, with its percentage printed on the jar.

Why does the preservative tell you where the glacier is?

Because of how ingredient lists are legally ordered. Under US labeling rules (21 CFR 701.3), ingredients above 1% must be listed in descending order of weight, but anything present at 1% or less can be listed in any order after them. So you cannot read exact percentages off a label — but you can often find the line where the formula crosses below 1%, and preservatives are the usual marker, because they are typically used at a fraction of a percent and capped low by regulation. Phenoxyethanol, the preservative here, sits at position 11; in the EU it is capped at 1% in cosmetics. Everything from roughly position 11 downward, then, is in that sub-1% tail.

That is the context for the second hero. The Glacial Glycoprotein — listed by its INCI name, Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract — is at position 29. It is a fermentation extract originally traced to bacteria from Antarctic glaciers, and Kiehl’s markets it as helping skin hold onto moisture. Whatever it does, it does it from the 29th slot, far below the preservative line. The position cannot give you an exact number, but it tells you plainly this is at or below 1%, and realistically a trace. A glacier is one of the trio Kiehl’s leads with; on the label it is behind the sweet almond oil, the xanthan gum and the vitamin E. (If you want the raw ingredient profile independent of the brand’s framing, incidecoder keeps a plain entry for Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract.)

Nib spots the gap: a glacier on the front of the jar, but the glacial glycoprotein is the 29th ingredient on the back.

What about the Pro-Ceramides?

The third hero, the Pro-Ceramide, is Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine at position 31 — two slots further down than the glacier, and firmly in the same sub-1% tail. It is a synthetic ceramide precursor rather than one of the ceramides (NP, AP, EOS and so on) that make up the skin’s own barrier, and ingredient references tend to list it as an emollient and skin-conditioning agent. The honest read is the same as for the glycoprotein: its position tells you it is a trace addition, and I am not going to claim more about what it does or does not do at that level than the position supports. If you want the neutral ingredient write-up, incidecoder has an entry for Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine.

One aside for anyone who reads the full list and gets a jolt from seeing “Salicylic Acid” at position 32 — that is not an added BHA exfoliant. According to the independent review at squalaneclub.com, which cross-checked this list against two additional ingredient registries, the salicylic acid comes in as the preservative for the glacial glycoprotein raw material, listed by the supplier as water, pseudoalteromonas ferment extract, salicylic acid and sodium hydroxide. In other words, it rode in with ingredient 29; it is not there to resurface your skin. At that depth it would be a trace in any case.

Squalane (#4)

The marketed 4.5% hero, genuinely near the top with its percentage printed on the jar. The honest claim.

Dimethicone (#3) + silicone (#5)

At least as much synthetic silicone as squalane; mentioned nowhere on the front.

Phenoxyethanol (#11)

The preservative, marking roughly where the formula drops below 1%.

Glacial Glycoprotein (#29)

Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract — a front-of-jar hero, sitting at or below 1%.

Pro-Ceramide (#31)

Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine — the third hero, also a trace addition in the sub-1% tail.

Nib marks the two quieter heroes: the glycoprotein at 29 and the pro-ceramide at 31, both tucked into the bottom third of the list.

So is Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream a bad moisturizer?

No — and that is not the point of reading the label. This is a competently built cream. Squalane high up, glycerin second doing the real humectant work, silicones to seal the surface, a spread of plant oils and a bit of vitamin E: that combination will leave most people’s skin feeling soft, and the squalane claim is more honest than a lot of the jars that pass this desk. The thing worth knowing is narrower. Of the three heroes Kiehl’s puts on the front, one (squalane) is where the marketing says it is, and two (the glacier and the pro-ceramide) are trace additions near the bottom of a list thirty-five entries long. If you are buying this cream for the Antarctic glacial glycoprotein, you are buying a cream whose main moisturizing work is being done by glycerin, silicone and squalane, with the glacier along for the story.

If what you actually want is a moisturizer where the ingredients doing the work are the short list of things you can read on the front, that is a different kind of formula — fewer ingredients, no sub-1% tail of trace heroes to decode. That is the whole idea behind our own tallow moisturizer at Evil Goods (Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods, and I point to it here because this entire piece is about which ingredients are actually present in a meaningful amount). It is not a verdict on Kiehl’s; it is the other end of the same label-reading exercise. Whatever you choose, the ingredient panel on the back is the honest document, and the front of the jar is the advertisement.

FAQ

What is the first ingredient in Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream with Squalane?
Water, followed by glycerin, dimethicone and then squalane at position 4 of 35. Kiehl’s prints “4.5% Squalane” on the jar, and the squalane’s placement at number 4 is consistent with that.

Where does the Glacial Glycoprotein sit in the ingredient list?
At position 29 of 35, listed by its INCI name Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract. It sits well below the preservative (phenoxyethanol, #11), which means it is present at or below 1% — almost certainly a trace amount, despite being one of the three heroes on the front of the jar.

Where is the Pro-Ceramide?
Hydroxypalmitoyl Sphinganine is at position 31, in the same sub-1% tail as the glycoprotein. It is a synthetic ceramide precursor, generally listed as an emollient, and its position indicates a trace addition.

Why is salicylic acid in the list?
At position 32 it is not an added exfoliant. An independent cross-check of the list reports it comes in as the preservative for the glacial glycoprotein raw material (supplied as water, pseudoalteromonas ferment extract, salicylic acid and sodium hydroxide), not as a BHA added by Kiehl’s.

Is squalane the same as squalene?
They are related but not identical. Squalene is a naturally occurring lipid that oxidizes easily; squalane is its hydrogenated, shelf-stable form. The cream uses squalane, here derived from olives, which is why it stays stable in the jar.

Nib’s parting note: three heroes on the front, but the panel on the back shows only one of them near the top — and that is the document worth reading.

October 16, 2026
Clinique Dramatically Different: urea at #9’s neighbor, dyes at the end

Clinique’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion+ markets three heroes — “pure urea,” “pure glycerin” and “3 pro-lipids.” Read the actual label and the base is water, then mineral oil, then glycerin, then petrolatum: two of the four biggest ingredients are petroleum-derived occlusives. The urea Clinique leads with sits at position 8 of 24. Right behind it, at position 9, is lanolin alcohol — a known contact allergen that appears in none of the marketing — on a product badged “allergy tested” and “safe for sensitive skin.” At the very bottom of the panel, below even the preservative, sit three synthetic dyes that color the lotion and do nothing for skin.

This is the usual game on this desk — quote the label, then show where the ingredient on the front of the bottle really lands in the list. Clinique’s DDML+ is a good one to run it on because it has been sold since 1968, it is Clinique’s stated number-one moisturizer, and almost everyone has seen the little amber bottle. The front of that bottle and the ingredient panel on the back tell slightly different stories.

What’s actually at the top of the Clinique bottle?

Here is the full ingredient list, quoted verbatim from Clinique’s own product page (clinique.com, formulation code ILN50644, read 15 October 2026):

Water\Aqua\Eau, Mineral Oil\Paraffinum Liquidum\Huile Minérale, Glycerin, Petrolatum, Stearic Acid, Glyceryl Stearate, Sesamum Indicum (Sesame) Oil, Urea, Lanolin Alcohol, Triethanolamine, Hordeum Vulgare (Barley) Extract\Extrait D’orge, Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber) Fruit Extract, Propylene Glycol Dicaprate, Sodium Hyaluronate, Butylene Glycol, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Extract, Pentylene Glycol, BHT, Disodium EDTA, Tetrasodium EDTA, Phenoxyethanol, Red 33 (CI 17200), Yellow 6 (CI 15985), Yellow 5 (CI 19140)

Source: clinique.com, the brand’s own listing, read 15 October 2026. Clinique adds its own caveat on that page — “ingredient lists may change or vary from time to time… refer to the ingredient list on the product package you receive” — which matters here more than usual (see the formulation note below). Numbered, the top of the list reads: Water (#1), Mineral Oil (#2), Glycerin (#3), Petrolatum (#4). Two of the four largest ingredients by weight — mineral oil and petrolatum — are petroleum-derived occlusives. Neither is harmful; both are effective at sealing in moisture. The point is simply where they sit. In a $34 “dermatologist-developed” moisturizer, mineral oil is present at a higher concentration than glycerin, than the marketed urea, than any botanical, and than the hyaluronic acid. Clinique groups the occlusives under the branded phrase “3 pro-lipids”; the most likely trio from the formula is mineral oil (#2), petrolatum (#4) and sesame oil (#7), though Clinique does not spell out which three it means, so treat that mapping as an inference rather than a confirmed fact.

Nib turns the famous amber bottle around and reads the back: water, mineral oil, glycerin, petrolatum — before the hero ingredients even begin.

Where does the urea Clinique markets actually sit?

At position 8 — and in fairness to the formula, that is honest placement. Clinique leads its DDML+ marketing with “pure urea,” and urea genuinely turns up above every botanical (barley #11, cucumber #12, sunflower #16), above the hyaluronic acid (#14), and above all the preservatives. Urea at this kind of position does real work: it is a humectant that helps skin hold water and, at higher strengths, a mild keratolytic that softens rough patches. This is actually the opposite of the usual story on this desk, where the hero ingredient hides near the bottom. Here the marketed active is prominent. The one caveat is the word “pure.” Urea is urea — “pure” is a reassuring adjective, not a different or better molecule. So the urea claim holds up on the label in a way many hero-ingredient claims do not; it is the ingredient sitting right after it that the marketing stays quiet about.

For once the hero ingredient keeps its promise: urea really does sit near the top, at number eight.

What is lanolin alcohol doing at position 9?

Sitting one line below the urea, unmentioned anywhere on the front of the bottle, is lanolin alcohol. It is a wool-wax derivative — related to, but not the same as, the lanolin (wool fat) many people picture — and it is the fraction most associated with lanolin contact allergy. That matters because DDML+ carries the claims “allergy tested,” “dermatologist-tested” and “safe for sensitive skin,” and lanolin alcohol is one of the more established contact allergens in dermatology patch-test panels.

Here is where I have to be careful, because the evidence has a specific shape. In people with existing dermatitis who get patch-tested, lanolin alcohol tests positive in roughly 1.2% to 6.9% across North American studies, and individual patch-test series of dermatitis patients have reported rates near 9% — higher still when a wider panel of lanolin derivatives is tested alongside it. But those are dermatitis-clinic populations, not the general public. A 2024 open-access review, “Hypersensitivity to Lanolin: An Old–New Problem” (which summarizes that patch-test literature), describes the so-called lanolin paradox: it has relatively low sensitizing potential on healthy skin but can trigger reactions on already-compromised skin. So the fair reading is not that this lotion will give you a rash — most people will be fine with lanolin alcohol — but that a product sold on “safe for sensitive skin” contains, at position 9, an ingredient a dermatologist would flag for exactly the sensitive, dermatitis-prone skin the claim targets, and never names it.

Nib spots the gap: “allergy tested” on the front, a classic patch-test allergen quietly at number nine on the back.

What sits at the very bottom of the panel?

Three synthetic colorants: Red 33 (CI 17200), Yellow 6 (CI 15985) and Yellow 5 (CI 19140), at positions 22, 23 and 24 — after even the preservative (phenoxyethanol, #21) and the two chelating agents (#19, #20). At that depth they are present in trace amounts, and their skincare function is none. What they do is color the lotion: without them the formula would be white or off-white, and with them it matches the recognizable Clinique amber. That is a brand-aesthetics decision, not a skin-care one, and it is worth knowing you are paying for the tint.

All three are permitted by the FDA for cosmetic use, so this is not a safety alarm. The one factual note worth adding is about Yellow 5: the FDA specifically requires products to name FD&C Yellow No. 5 on the label because, in its words, “some individuals may have hypersensitivity reactions” to it — which is why you can read it by name here at all. I did not find a published patch-test rate for these three dyes specifically in leave-on face moisturizers, so I will not invent one. The honest summary: three dyes, zero skincare benefit, there to make the lotion look like Clinique.

The base (#1–4)

Water, Mineral Oil, Glycerin, Petrolatum — two of the top four are petroleum-derived occlusives.

Urea (#8)

The marketed “pure urea” hero, genuinely above the botanicals, the HA and the preservatives.

Lanolin Alcohol (#9)

A known contact allergen on an “allergy tested” product, named nowhere in the marketing.

Red 33, Yellow 6, Yellow 5 (#22–24)

Three synthetic dyes at the very bottom; they color the lotion and nothing more.

Nib reaches the end of the list and finds the last three entries are dyes — present to make the lotion amber, not to do anything for skin.

Does “allergy tested” mean anything on a label?

Not in any regulated sense. The FDA is blunt about this family of terms. On its “Hypoallergenic” Cosmetics page the agency states there are “no Federal standards or definitions that govern the use of the term ‘hypoallergenic’” and that it “knows of no scientific studies which show that ‘hypoallergenic’ cosmetics or products making similar claims actually cause fewer adverse reactions than competing conventional products.” Its Allergens in Cosmetics guidance adds that “it isn’t enough to check for terms like ‘hypoallergenic,’ ‘fragrance-free’ or ‘for sensitive skin,’ as there is no federal standard or definition that governs the use of these terms in the U.S.”

So “allergy tested,” “dermatologist-tested” and “safe for sensitive skin” are marketing statements a brand may apply on its own terms. They are not meaningless — a brand may well run its own testing — but they are not a regulated guarantee, and Clinique does not publish the protocols behind them, so there is no way to say from outside what that testing does or does not cover. The one document that is complete and checkable is the ingredient panel, which is exactly why it is worth reading. If you are drawn to DDML+ for “sensitive skin,” the sensible move is to read that panel — specifically the lanolin alcohol at #9 — against your own history, and to check the formulation code on your own bottle, because Clinique has run at least two versions (an older ILN39477 and the current ILN50644) that differ in real ways, including whether BHT is present and whether the sunflower ingredient is an abrasive seedcake or a plain seed extract.

If what you actually want is a moisturizer where the things you can read on the label are the things doing the work — rather than a petroleum base dressed up as “pro-lipids” with a tint at the end — that is the comparison our own Evil Goods write-up of tallow versus lotion walks through (Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods, and we point to it here because this whole piece is about what sits where in the bottle). It is not a verdict on Clinique; it is just the other side of the same label-reading exercise. Whatever you pick, the panel on the back is the honest document and the front of the box is the advertisement.

FAQ

What is the first ingredient in Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion+?
Water, followed by mineral oil, glycerin and petrolatum. Two of the four largest ingredients by weight — mineral oil and petrolatum — are petroleum-derived occlusives, grouped in Clinique’s marketing under the phrase “3 pro-lipids.”

Where does urea sit in the ingredient list?
At position 8 of 24, above the botanical extracts, the hyaluronic acid and the preservatives. That is genuinely prominent placement for a marketed hero ingredient. “Pure urea” is a marketing phrase — urea is urea.

Does the lotion contain lanolin?
It contains lanolin alcohol at position 9 — a wool-wax derivative and a recognized contact allergen in dermatology patch testing. It is not named in Clinique’s marketing, which carries “allergy tested” and “safe for sensitive skin” claims. Most people tolerate it; those with dermatitis-prone or already-compromised skin are the group most likely to react.

What sits at the very bottom of the ingredient panel?
Red 33 (CI 17200), Yellow 6 (CI 15985) and Yellow 5 (CI 19140) — three synthetic colorants at positions 22–24. They give the lotion its amber tint and have no skincare function. All three are permitted by the FDA for cosmetic use; the FDA requires Yellow 5 to be named on labels because some people may have hypersensitivity reactions to it.

Does “allergy tested” on the label mean it won’t cause a reaction?
No. The FDA says there is no federal standard or definition governing terms like “hypoallergenic,” “allergy tested” or “for sensitive skin,” and knows of no studies showing such products cause fewer reactions than conventional ones. The ingredient panel is the document to read instead.

Nib’s parting note: the little amber bottle is iconic, but it’s the ingredient panel on the back — not the words on the front — that actually tells you what you’re buying.

October 15, 2026
Salt & Stone Deodorant: the hyaluronic acid depends on which SKU you buy

Salt & Stone markets its aluminum-free deodorants on magnesium, niacinamide and hyaluronic acid. Read the actual labels and the hyaluronic-acid story falls apart by SKU and by region. The flagship Stick’s current US ingredient panel does not list hyaluronic acid at all. The one Salt & Stone product that genuinely contains it is the separate Deodorant Gel, where it sits at position 19 of 20 — second to last. And the Stick’s own formula is not even consistent across the brand’s regional storefronts.

This is the site’s usual game — quote the label, show where the hero ingredient really sits — but Salt & Stone makes it unusually tangled, because there is more than one label. Depending on which SKU you buy and which country’s storefront you read, the “same” product lists different ingredients. So before trusting a hyaluronic-acid claim on the shelf, it is worth knowing which jar actually contains any.

Where does hyaluronic acid sit on the Salt & Stone Stick?

It doesn’t — not on the current US panel. Here is the full list for the flagship Extra-Strength Aluminum-Free Deodorant Stick, quoted verbatim from Salt & Stone’s own US product listing (Black Rose & Oud variant, checked across five scents; base formula identical before the fragrance tail), read on 14 October 2026:

Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Tapioca Starch, Ozokerite, Magnesium Hydroxide, Sodium Bicarbonate, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Fragrance (Parfum), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Niacinamide, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Tocopherol, Spirulina Platensis Extract, Lactobacillus Ferment, Maltodextrin, [scent-specific fragrance components: Benzyl Benzoate / Geraniol / Limonene / Citral / Linalool / Eugenol, etc.]

Source: saltandstone.com, the brand’s own product page, read 14 October 2026, and corroborated against a major US beauty retailer’s listing for the same variant (page dated 16 September 2026) the same day. Magnesium Hydroxide is the fourth ingredient — genuinely near the top, above the 1% floor, so the brand’s headline mineral really is present at a meaningful level. Niacinamide is ninth. There is no hyaluronic acid or sodium hyaluronate anywhere in this panel. Worth noting for anyone drawn to the brand’s “baking soda-free” reputation in the category: Sodium Bicarbonate — baking soda — sits at position five, present and fairly high.

Nib reads the US Stick label top to bottom, hunting for the hyaluronic acid the marketing promised, and never finds it.

So which Salt & Stone product actually contains hyaluronic acid?

The Deodorant Gel — a different, sensitive-skin SKU. Here is its full list, quoted verbatim from Salt & Stone’s own Santal & Vetiver Deodorant Gel listing and corroborated against the brand’s mini-duo product page, both read 14 October 2026:

Propylene Glycol, Water (Aqua), Sodium Stearate, Fragrance (Parfum), Polyglyceryl-10 Caprylate/Caprate, Propanediol, Saccharomyces Ferment, Glycerin, Glyceryl Caprylate, Maranta Arundinacea Root Powder, Zea Mays (Corn) Starch, Glyceryl Undecylenate, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Macrocystis Pyrifera (Kelp) Extract, Saccharina Longicruris Extract, Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate, Hyaluronic Acid, Citric Acid, Benzyl Benzoate

Source: saltandstone.com, Aluminum Free Gel Deodorant Mini Duo, page dated 13 October 2026, corroborated against a major retailer’s Deodorant Gel listing (page dated 6 October 2026) the same day. Hyaluronic Acid is position 19 of 20 — second to last, ahead only of Benzyl Benzoate, a fragrance-fixative and common contact allergen. US ingredient lists run in descending order of concentration only down to 1%; after that, order is no longer required, so every ingredient past roughly the first eight to ten can be in any sequence. That is exactly the stretch where this hyaluronic acid sits. Per the FDA’s cosmetics labeling guide, that is all a label at that depth promises: a trace, a long way below the ingredients doing the actual work. Note too that this Gel is built on propylene glycol and glycerin — it has no magnesium hydroxide and no baking soda at all, a completely different base from the Stick.

In the one SKU that does contain it, the hyaluronic acid turns up right at the bottom — position 19 of 20.

Why do two countries’ labels for the same Stick disagree?

Because they do, and I can only report the discrepancy, not resolve it. A major international beauty retailer’s UK and Thailand storefronts list a materially different panel for the same Extra-Strength Stick, read 14 October 2026:

Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Tapioca Starch, Magnesium Hydroxide, Sodium Bicarbonate, Ozokerite, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Sodium Hyaluronate, Spirulina Platensis Extract, Fragrance (Parfum), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Lactobacillus Ferment, Tocopherol, Maltodextrin

Source: that retailer’s UK storefront (page dated 27 September 2026), corroborated against its Thailand storefront the same day. Here Sodium Hyaluronate appears at position 7, and niacinamide is absent entirely — the mirror image of the US panel, which has niacinamide and no hyaluronate. The discrepancy is checkable by anyone comparing the two regions’ listings side by side.

US Stick (brand + US retailer listing)

Magnesium Hydroxide #4, Niacinamide #9, no hyaluronic acid on the panel.

UK / Thailand Stick (same retailer, other regions)

Sodium Hyaluronate #7, no niacinamide. A different base order from the US list.

Deodorant Gel (sensitive-skin SKU)

Hyaluronic Acid #19 of 20; no magnesium, no baking soda.

I can’t tell you which panel is the true current formula in your jar. The honest reading — and the one the sourcing supports — is that the US and UK/Asia listings for this product do not match, so a shopper buying on the hyaluronic-acid claim should check their own region’s physical label rather than the marketing. Retailer listings also go stale, and a supplier or data-entry error at one storefront would look exactly like a genuine formula difference. I am not claiming the brand is misrepresenting anything; I’m showing that the labels, as published, disagree. For the record, deodorant (unlike antiperspirant) is a cosmetic in the US, not an OTC drug, and per the FDA the agency does not pre-approve cosmetic claims — “natural” carries no regulatory weight on any of these labels.

Two labels for the “same” Stick, one from each side of an ocean — and Nib can’t make them agree.

Does the hyaluronic acid’s position mean the deodorant is bad?

No — and that is the point worth being careful about. A trace of hyaluronic acid near the end of a list isn’t a defect; it is simply far less than the marketing implies, and in a product that sits on your skin for seconds before you dress, a humectant’s job is marginal anyway. The ingredients that decide how a Salt & Stone deodorant feels and performs are the ones at the top: the triglyceride and starch base, the magnesium hydroxide, the fragrance. If something irritates, the likeliest culprit is the fragrance tail, not the magnesium or the baking soda. Named dermatologists in NBC News Select’s natural-deodorant guide make the same point: “natural” is not FDA-regulated, these formulas mask or absorb rather than stop sweat, and there is no established health advantage over conventional antiperspirants. And the baking-soda panic is overstated: the Cosmetic Ingredient Review’s published safety assessment of sodium bicarbonate concluded it is not a skin or eye irritant in patch studies and is safe as used in cosmetics — a more reassuring picture than the “natural deodorant gave me a rash” discourse suggests, where the fragrance is the likelier trigger.

Nib’s verdict: a trace humectant isn’t a scandal — it just isn’t the story the front of the jar tells.

What should you actually check before you buy?

Read the panel on the jar in your hand, not the marketing and not another country’s listing. If hyaluronic acid is the reason you’re reaching for Salt & Stone, the Stick on a US shelf probably doesn’t contain it, and the Gel that does carries it at a trace. If you simply want an aluminum-free stick where the ingredients you can read match what’s on the front, that is a reasonable thing to want — and it is the thing our own Evil Goods tallow deodorant is built around (Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods, and we link it here because the whole piece is about label trust). We make no sweat-reduction or efficacy claim for it; it is a cosmetic deodorant like the others here. Whatever you choose, the label is the honest document — the box is advertising.

FAQ

Does Salt & Stone’s deodorant Stick contain hyaluronic acid?
On the current US ingredient panel, no — it lists magnesium hydroxide, sodium bicarbonate and niacinamide, with no hyaluronic acid or sodium hyaluronate. The UK and Thailand listings for the same Stick do show sodium hyaluronate at position 7, so it depends which region’s label you read.

Which Salt & Stone product actually has hyaluronic acid?
The Deodorant Gel, a separate sensitive-skin SKU. It lists Hyaluronic Acid at position 19 of 20 — second to last.

Where does magnesium sit on the Salt & Stone Stick?
Magnesium Hydroxide is the fourth ingredient on the US panel, above the 1% threshold, so it is present at a meaningful level.

Is the baking soda in a natural deodorant a problem?
The Cosmetic Ingredient Review found sodium bicarbonate is not a skin or eye irritant in patch testing and is safe as used in cosmetics. Fragrance is the more common irritation trigger in deodorants.

Nib’s parting note: whichever deodorant you pick, trust the label on the jar — not the front of the box.

October 14, 2026

Drunk Elephant Protini: The Peptides Start at Ingredient #10

Drunk Elephant Protini is sold as a “polypeptide” firming moisturizer with a nine-peptide complex. On the label, the first peptide — sh-Oligopeptide-1 — appears at ingredient number ten, after water, an emollient, glycerin, three emulsifiers, a seed oil, a ferment and a botanical extract. The copper compound in the formula is Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14, which is not the same molecule as copper tripeptide-1 (GHK-Cu), the copper peptide most of the published research is actually about.

We quote ingredient lists so you can check them yourself. Here is Protini’s, verbatim from the Drunk Elephant product page (drunkelephant.com, fetched 13 October 2026, HTTP 200), and corroborated word-for-word by a major US retailer’s listing for the same product (SKU P427421). Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods, who make a copper peptide serum of their own; we say so here, in the footer, and anywhere an Evil Goods product comes up.

Water/Aqua/Eau, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Glycerin, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Olivate, Sorbitan Olivate, Sclerocarya Birrea Seed Oil, Bacillus/Folic Acid Ferment Extract, Nymphaea Alba Root Extract, sh-Oligopeptide-1, sh-Oligopeptide-2, sh-Polypeptide-1, sh-Polypeptide-9, sh-Polypeptide-11, Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14, Heptapeptide-15 Palmitate, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1, Alanine, Arginine, Glycine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Phenylalanine, Proline, Serine, Threonine, Valine, Acetyl Glutamine, Coconut Alkanes, Coco-Caprylate/Caprate, Sodium Hyaluronate, Aspartic Acid, Linoleic Acid, Linolenic Acid, Lecithin, Butylene Glycol, Polyvinyl Alcohol, Sodium Lactate, Sodium PCA, PCA, Sorbitan Isostearate, Carbomer, Polysorbate 20, Polysorbate 60, Lactic Acid/Glycolic Acid Copolymer, Hydroxyethyl Acrylate/Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer, Xanthan Gum, Isomalt, 1,2-Hexanediol, Caprylyl Glycol, Chlorphenesin, Phenoxyethanol, Tocopherol, Sodium Benzoate, Phenylpropanol, Glyceryl Caprylate, Symphytum Officinale Callus Culture Extract.

What is actually in Drunk Elephant Protini?

The front of the jar leads with peptides. The first nine ingredients are not peptides. In descending order of how much is in the jar, they are:

Water — the solvent almost every water-based cream is built on.
Dicaprylyl Carbonate — a light emollient ester, the kind of silicone alternative that gives a cream its slip.
Glycerin — a humectant, one of the most reliable and least expensive moisturizing agents there is.
Cetearyl Alcohol — a fatty alcohol that thickens and helps emulsify.
Cetearyl Olivate and Sorbitan Olivate (5 and 6) — a pair of olive-derived emulsifiers that hold oil and water together.
Sclerocarya Birrea Seed Oil — marula oil, a genuinely nice emollient with antioxidants.
Bacillus/Folic Acid Ferment Extract — a fermented folic acid ingredient Drunk Elephant markets as a hero.
Nymphaea Alba Root Extract — pygmy waterlily extract, the brand’s “stem cell” botanical.

None of this is a criticism. It is a perfectly competent moisturizer base — marula oil and a folic-acid ferment are more interesting than most. The point is only that these eight ingredients, not the peptides, make up the bulk of what you are applying. That is what “descending order of predominance” means, and it is worth knowing before we get to the part the name is selling.

Nib, a small round pencil-sketch creature, holds a magnifying glass up to a tall jar labelled Polypeptide, squinting at the fine print on the back. — Nib reads the back of the jar, not the front. The front says polypeptide; the back has fifty-eight lines to get through first.

Where do the peptides actually appear?

US cosmetic labels have to list ingredients in descending order of how much is present, down to one percent. Below one percent, a brand can list things in any order it likes. That rule is set out in 21 CFR 701.3 — subsection (a) requires descending order; subsection (f)(2) is the under-one-percent exemption. So ingredient position is not an exact percentage, but above that one-percent line it is a real signal of how much is in the jar.

Here is where Protini’s nine peptides sit:

Position	INCI name	What it is
10	sh-Oligopeptide-1	growth-factor-type peptide (EGF-style) — the first peptide in the list
11	sh-Oligopeptide-2	growth-factor-type peptide (IGF-1-style)
12	sh-Polypeptide-1	growth-factor-type peptide (bFGF-style)
13	sh-Polypeptide-9	growth-factor-type peptide
14	sh-Polypeptide-11	growth-factor-type peptide
15	Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14	the copper peptide — a seven-amino-acid chain with a fatty-acid tail and copper
16	Heptapeptide-15 Palmitate	signal peptide
17	Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7	signal peptide (often sold as Rigin)
18	Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1	signal peptide — a palmitoylated GHK chain, without the copper

The peptides occupy positions ten through eighteen. The one directly after them, at nineteen, is alanine — an individual amino acid. On most labels, the appearance of free amino acids marks the point where you have crossed below the one-percent line. The whole nine-peptide complex, in other words, almost certainly lives in the slice of the formula that sits under one percent combined. That is normal for peptides; they work at low concentrations. It is simply not what “polypeptide cream” implies to someone reading the front.

Nib stands at the foot of a long numbered ladder of ingredients, pencil pointing up at rung number ten where the first peptide sits. — The first peptide waits nine rungs up the list. Everything below it is the moisturizer most moisturizers already are.

Is the copper peptide in Protini the one the research is about?

At position fifteen is Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14. When most people say “copper peptide” they mean something else: copper tripeptide-1, also written GHK-Cu (CAS 89030-95-5), a three-amino-acid chain bound to copper. GHK-Cu is the compound with the long history — a 2025 review of tripeptides in skin calls it one of the most-used peptides in the cosmetic industry and names copper tripeptide-1 as its INCI identity. Protini does not contain copper tripeptide-1. It contains a different, palmitoylated copper peptide.

That difference matters for how you read the research. A 2026 systematic review of GHK-Cu describes forty-plus years of pre-clinical work, then adds the honest part: the clinical evidence “remains thin and fragmented,” most trials are small, and the findings have not been validated in large human studies. So even for the best-studied copper peptide, the human evidence is promising rather than settled. For Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14 specifically, the published literature is thinner still — which is not the same as saying it does nothing, only that you should not read GHK-Cu’s forty-year file as if it belonged to this molecule. If you want the plain-English version of what a copper peptide even is, we wrote one (that is our site, Evil Goods).

Nib holds up two labelled test tubes side by side, one marked Copper Tripeptide-1 and one marked Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14, looking from one to the other. — Two copper peptides, two different names. Nib checks which one the research is actually about.

What is everything below position eighteen?

The back half of the list is mostly supporting cast. Positions nineteen through twenty-nine are individual amino acids — alanine, arginine, glycine and the rest — which act as natural moisturizing factors and as the building blocks peptides are made from, but are not themselves peptides. Sodium hyaluronate, the much-hyped hydrating ingredient, sits all the way down at position thirty-two, well below that one-percent line.

Two preservatives sit near the very bottom: chlorphenesin at position fifty-two and phenoxyethanol at fifty-three. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel concluded chlorphenesin is safe at present practices of use and concentration. Alongside that, the patch-test literature carries a handful of case reports of allergic contact dermatitis from products containing it — the CIR report itself cites several. These are rare reactions at low rates, not a reason to avoid the ingredient, but worth knowing if your skin has flagged a preservative before. That is the honest shape of it: broadly safe by the review body’s assessment, with a small sensitization signal in the case reports.

Nib sits cross-legged at the bottom of the ingredient list reading a tiny footnote next to the word Chlorphenesin, a stack of case-report papers beside him. — Down at position fifty-two, Nib stops to read the footnotes a few people have left on the preservative.

So is Drunk Elephant Protini worth it?

If you like how it feels and it suits your skin, the position of an ingredient does not undo that — a good emollient base is a real thing to buy. What the label does tell you is that you are paying a peptide-cream price for a cream whose peptides sit below one percent, built on a base you could find in far cheaper moisturizers. Whether that trade is worth it is a judgement about your own skin and budget, not something the front of the jar settles for you. If you specifically want copper peptides, it is worth knowing which copper peptide you are buying and how thin the human evidence still is for any of them — including the one in our own Copper Peptide Blue Honey Serum, which uses copper tripeptide-1.

FAQ

Where do the peptides start in Drunk Elephant Protini?: At ingredient number ten, sh-Oligopeptide-1. The first nine ingredients are water, an emollient ester, glycerin, three emulsifiers, marula seed oil, a folic-acid ferment and a waterlily extract.
What is sh-Oligopeptide-1?: A synthetic growth-factor-style peptide (an EGF analog) used in skincare at low concentrations. It is the first of Protini’s nine-peptide complex.
Is the copper peptide in Protini GHK-Cu?: No. Protini contains Copper Palmitoyl Heptapeptide-14. GHK-Cu is copper tripeptide-1, a different molecule and the one most of the published research is conducted on.
What does ingredient order tell you about a moisturizer?: US rules require listing in descending order of amount down to one percent (21 CFR 701.3). So an ingredient’s position is a real signal of how much is present — above the one-percent line, at least. Below it, order no longer reflects quantity.
Is chlorphenesin safe?: The Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel concluded it is safe at the concentrations cosmetics use. A small number of allergic contact dermatitis case reports exist in the patch-test literature, which is a sensitization note rather than a general warning.

Nib closes a thick notebook, magnifying glass tucked under one arm, giving a small satisfied nod next to the finished ingredient list. — The label told the whole story. It just told it in order of how much is in the jar.

October 13, 2026

Peter Thomas Roth Water Drench: Hyaluronic Acid Is the 6th Ingredient

On the Peter Thomas Roth Water Drench Hyaluronic Cloud Cream label, Sodium Hyaluronate — the INCI name for hyaluronic acid — is the sixth ingredient, listed after two separate silicone compounds. The product is sold on a “30% Hyaluronic Acid Complex,” but that “30%” names a proprietary blend, not the concentration of hyaluronic acid in the cream. The second ingredient, before glycerin, is Dimethicone.

I like reading the ingredient list on a product whose whole name is a promise. “Water Drench.” “Hyaluronic.” “Cloud Cream.” Peter Thomas Roth’s Water Drench Hyaluronic Cloud Cream ($55 for 1.7 oz at Dermstore and Macy’s as of October 2026) leans its entire pitch on a “30% Hyaluronic Acid Complex.” So I went and read the label — and the hyaluronic acid turns out to be sixth on the ingredient list.

Nib, a small round pencil-sketched creature, holds a magnifying glass up to a jar labelled 30% and squints at the small print on the back. — Nib reads the back of the jar, not the front. The “30%” is on the front.

What does “30% Hyaluronic Acid Complex” actually mean?

It means less than it sounds like, and the word doing the quiet work is Complex. A “complex” is a supplier- or brand-defined blend. Peter Thomas Roth does not publish what is in the complex or what fraction of the formula it represents, so “30%” cannot be read as “30% hyaluronic acid.”

There is a physical reason it cannot. A 30% sodium hyaluronate solution would be a stiff, barely-pourable paste, not a light cream — hyaluronic acid is an extraordinary water-binder even at tiny amounts. In leave-on skincare, HA typically sits between 0.2% and 1%, as a 2025 review in Pharmaceutics summarising its cosmetic use lays out in the published literature. Against that calibration, a cream genuinely built on 30% HA would not behave like a cream at all.

The likelier reading is ordinary and not sinister: brands often buy a pre-made aqueous blend that is itself, say, 30% HA by weight, then use it at a few percent of the finished formula. That would leave real HA somewhere around 1–2%, which is exactly what a position-6 placement implies. I can’t confirm the arithmetic without a disclosure or a certificate of analysis, and neither can you — which is the point.

Nib points a pencil at a long vertical INCI list taped to the wall, tracing down past the top entries to a line highlighted sixth from the top. — Counting down the list: water, silicone, glycerin, solvent, a second silicone — then hyaluronic acid.

Where does the hyaluronic acid actually sit?

Here is the top of the list, quoted verbatim. INCI is ordered by concentration down to 1%, so position is the most honest number a label gives you for the ingredients near the top.

Sodium Hyaluronate is the sixth ingredient. Ahead of it: Water, Dimethicone, Glycerin, Dipropylene Glycol, and a second silicone, Dimethicone/PEG-10/15 Crosspolymer. Everything listed above it — water, a silicone, glycerin, a solvent, and a second silicone — is present at a higher level than the named hero, and two of those are silicones.

#	Ingredient (INCI)	What it is
1	Water/Aqua/Eau	Solvent base
2	Dimethicone	Silicone film-former / occlusive
3	Glycerin	Humectant
4	Dipropylene Glycol	Solvent / humectant
5	Dimethicone/PEG-10/15 Crosspolymer	A second, cross-linked silicone
6	Sodium Hyaluronate	Hyaluronic acid — the named hero

None of that makes it a bad moisturizer. Glycerin is a workhorse humectant and silicones have a real job, which is the next question. But “Water Drench” paints a picture of a formula carried by water and hyaluronic acid, and the label describes one carried by water and silicone.

The full US ingredient list, verbatim:

Water/Aqua/Eau, Dimethicone, Glycerin, Dipropylene Glycol, Dimethicone/PEG-10/15 Crosspolymer, Sodium Hyaluronate, Yeast Extract, Ceramide AP, Ceramide EOP, Ceramide EOS, Ceramide NP, Ceramide NS, Sambucus Nigra Fruit Extract, Sodium PCA, Tocopherol, Saccharide Isomerate, Caprooyl Phytosphingosine, Caprooyl Sphingosine, Saccharomyces/Iron Ferment, Saccharomyces/Copper Ferment, Saccharomyces/Silicon Ferment, Saccharomyces/Magnesium Ferment, Saccharomyces/Zinc Ferment, Olea Europaea (Olive) Leaf Extract, Cholesterol, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Methyl Gluceth-20, Sodium Chloride, Trisiloxane, Propylene Glycol, Ceteareth-25, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Behenic Acid, Butylene Glycol, Lauryl PEG-9 Polydimethylsiloxyethyl Dimethicone, Cetyl Alcohol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Mica, Phenoxyethanol.

Source: a major US retailer’s product listing (catalog ID P416160), read 1 October 2026, matching the ingredient list published on peterthomasroth.com. This is the US formula; a 2024 Canadian listing for the same product shows a different silicone profile with Sodium Hyaluronate at position 8, so the formula may vary by region and over time.

Nib pokes the surface of a smooth silky blob of cream with a pencil, watching it slide, a small thought-bubble showing a droplet of silicone oil. — The silky, slip-on-skin feel most people read as “hydration” is largely the silicone at position 2.

What is the silicone at position 2 doing?

Dimethicone is a silicone film-former. It sits on the skin as a thin, breathable layer that slows water loss and gives that instantly-smooth, slip feel — the sensation a lot of people interpret as “deeply hydrating” the moment they rub it in. A 2023 review in the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology describes exactly this occlusive, film-forming role, and an ingredient explainer at Dermapedia puts the everyday moisturizer range at roughly 1–10%.

There is nothing wrong with dimethicone. It is well-tolerated and it genuinely helps skin hold moisture by occlusion. The honest observation is narrower: in a cream named “Water Drench,” the thing most responsible for the drenched feeling is a silicone, not the water or the hyaluronic acid on the front of the box.

Nib holds up a stopwatch reading 72 and looks sceptically at a tiny vial labelled with the number sixteen, a tape measure showing a very short length. — The “72-hour” ingredient is the sixteenth on the list. Nib checks the stopwatch against the dose.

What about the “72-hour hydration” claim?

That claim rides on a different ingredient: Saccharide Isomerate, sold as Pentavitin, which is the sixteenth ingredient — after all five ceramides, the elderberry extract, Sodium PCA and vitamin E. It is a carbohydrate that binds to the skin’s own natural moisturizing factor rather than a form of hyaluronic acid.

Here is the part worth knowing: the manufacturer, DSM-Firmenich, demonstrates the 72-hour effect at a 3% concentration in its own studies, with a recommended use range of 1–5%. Position 16 — below five ceramides that themselves are usually present at a fraction of a percent — is consistent with the low end of that range. That doesn’t make the 72-hour figure false. It means the number comes from a specific tested dose, and the label gives you no way to know whether this formula matches it.

So is it a good buy at $55?

It’s a competent, pleasant moisturizer with a real ceramide blend, glycerin, a humectant carbohydrate and some hyaluronic acid. If the silky finish and a well-rounded humectant mix are what you’re after, it does that. What it is not is a cream carried by hyaluronic acid, which is what the name and the “30%” badge imply. You’re paying a premium partly for a marketing number that describes an undisclosed blend.

If the thing you actually want is a product where the active is named on the label instead of buried in a complex, that’s the whole design brief behind our own Copper Peptide Blue Honey Serum (full disclosure: Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods) — copper peptides, hyaluronic acid, Manuka honey and niacinamide, named on the product rather than wrapped in a percentage you can’t trace. I’d still rather you read its label the same way you just read this one.

Frequently asked questions

Does Water Drench Cloud Cream contain 30% hyaluronic acid?: No. The “30% Hyaluronic Acid Complex” names a proprietary blend; its composition and percentage are not disclosed. Sodium Hyaluronate (the INCI name for HA) is the sixth ingredient on the US label.
What is the first active after water?: Dimethicone, a silicone film-former, is the second ingredient — ahead of glycerin and the hyaluronic acid.
Where does the “72-hour hydration” claim come from?: From Saccharide Isomerate (Pentavitin), the sixteenth ingredient. Its maker demonstrates the effect at 3%; the recommended range is 1–5%.
Is the formula the same everywhere?: Not necessarily. A 2024 Canadian listing showed a different silicone profile and HA at position 8. This piece uses the US formula read on 1 October 2026.

Nib sits on top of the closed jar, pencil behind one ear, holding up a small sign reading 'read the back' with a satisfied grin. — Nib’s one rule of the ingredient desk: the front of the jar is the pitch, the back is the formula. Read the back.

October 12, 2026

Native Coconut & Vanilla: the coconut oil is ingredient #6

Native’s Coconut & Vanilla
deodorant is named and marketed for coconut oil. On the US label, cocos nucifera
(coconut) oil sits sixth on the list. The ingredient present in the largest
amount is caprylic/capric triglyceride — a processed coconut fraction, not
whole coconut oil — while the actual deodorizing is done by sodium bicarbonate
and magnesium hydroxide, which sit at positions 4 and 5, ahead of the coconut oil the
stick is named after.

US ingredient lists are printed in descending order of weight, down to the
one-percent line. That single rule turns the back of a deodorant into something you
can read like a ranking: whatever is near the top is most of what you are putting on
your skin, and whatever is near the bottom is a rounding error. A stick called
“Coconut & Vanilla” is making a promise with its name. So let’s
read the list, in order, and see where the coconut actually lands.

What does the Native Coconut & Vanilla label actually say?

Here is the ingredient list exactly as printed, read on 11 October 2026 from the
retailer product page (listing TCIN
75567578) and corroborated against the Giant
Food listing for the same stick. I am quoting it verbatim because the whole point
of reading a label is that you can check it against me:

caprylic/capric triglyceride, tapioca starch, ozokerite, sodium
bicarbonate, magnesium hydroxide, cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, cyclodextrin,
butyrospermum parkii (shea) butter, fragrance, dextrose, lactobacillus
acidophilus

Read it top to bottom. The Giant Food listing runs shorter — identical in
order through fragrance, then missing the dextrose and lactobacillus acidophilus that
the retailer page carries, which reads like an older label photographed before Native
added its probiotic. Everything through fragrance matches across both retailers, so
that is the part I am most confident in. Now the ranking:

Position	Ingredient	What it does
1	Caprylic/capric triglyceride	Carrier oil — a fractionated coconut (or palm) derivative, not whole coconut oil
2	Tapioca starch	Absorbent, gives the dry feel
3	Ozokerite	Wax that makes it a solid stick
4	Sodium bicarbonate	Baking soda — a deodorizing active
5	Magnesium hydroxide	The milder deodorizing active
6	Cocos nucifera (coconut) oil	The ingredient on the front of the stick
7	Cyclodextrin	Molecular “cage” that traps odour compounds
8	Butyrospermum parkii (shea) butter	Emollient
9	Fragrance	Where the coconut-vanilla scent comes from
10	Dextrose	Sugar — food for the probiotic below
11	Lactobacillus acidophilus	Probiotic, at trace level

Pencil sketch of Nib tapping a pencil on the sixth line of a numbered ingredient list, where the word COCONUT is circled, with five lines above it. — Six lines down, past two waxes and two deodorizing actives, Nib finds the coconut oil the stick is named for.

Where is the coconut oil — and is the #1 slot coconut too?

This is the part that rewards reading in order. The coconut oil — whole
cocos nucifera oil, the thing a shopper pictures when they read
“Coconut” on the front — is sixth. Above it sit a carrier oil, a
starch, a wax and the two deodorizing actives. In a list where position tracks
weight, sixth means there is less coconut oil in the stick than any of those five.

The twist is the top line. Caprylic/capric triglyceride, the single largest
ingredient, is also made from coconut (or palm) — but it is the
fractionated form: the oil split into its medium-chain pieces, lighter, more stable,
a different feel and a different molecule from the coconut oil sitting at number six.
So the product is genuinely coconut-derived at position one; it is just not the whole
coconut oil the name implies. Two different coconut ingredients, one dominant and
processed, one named-after and sixth. Neither is wrong to include. The gap is only
between what the front says and what the ranking shows.

And the coconut-vanilla scent? That is not coming from the oil at six.
It is the “fragrance” at position nine. The smell you associate with the
coconut is a separate ingredient from the coconut.

Pencil sketch of Nib holding a small coconut labelled number 6 in one hand and a large bottle labelled number 1 in the other, looking between them. — A coconut at number six, a processed coconut fraction doing the heavy lifting up at number one. Nib keeps the ranking straight.

Why does a “natural” deodorant make my armpit burn?

The pair sitting at positions four and five are the ones actually controlling
odour, and the first of them is the usual reason people’s underarms sting.
Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. It works, and it sits in the top five by weight
— Native does not disclose the exact percentage, so I can say “top
five” and not a number. The mechanism people run into is simple pH: baking soda
is alkaline, around pH 8 to 9, while skin’s surface sits acidic, roughly 4.5 to
5.5. Rubbing an alkaline powder into warm, occluded skin every morning is where the
irritation stories come from.

How strong is that claim? Honestly, more hedged than the internet makes it sound.
A 2024 review in the Journal of
Integrative Dermatology on baking soda and the skin found documented case
reports of topical irritation but concluded that the safe topical concentration
“is not clear” — some people tolerate it fine, some clearly
don’t, and the literature has not pinned down exactly where the line is. So the
fair version is: baking soda is the most likely culprit if a natural deodorant has
ever burned you, not that it burns everyone.

The tell is in Native’s own catalogue. They sell a separate
“Sensitive” version of this stick with the baking soda swapped out for
magnesium oxide. A brand does not build a second SKU around removing an ingredient
unless enough customers reacted to it in the first. If you have had that problem and
you want an alternative that leaves the baking soda out entirely, our
own tallow deodorant is the one we make — said plainly, because this site
is run by the Evil Goods team and I would rather tell you that than bury it.

Pencil sketch of Nib at a desk comparing a box labelled pH 8 to a strip labelled pH 5, an open research paper beside the ingredient list. — Baking soda up at pH 8, skin down around pH 5. Nib checks the two against the review paper before saying a word.

What about the “fragrance” at position nine?

Fragrance in a leave-on product that touches warm, occluded skin all day is worth
a second look, and here the evidence is sturdier than the baking-soda nuance. A review
in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, hosted
on NIH’s PMC, surveyed 107 deodorant and antiperspirant products and found
fragrance in about 90% of them — and it was the most common allergen in the
category. Deodorants are, as the clinical literature puts it, one of the most frequent
sources of fragrance sensitisation, because of exactly where and how often they are
applied.

That does not make fragrance dangerous to most people. It means that if you are
one of the minority who reacts to fragrance, a daily leave-on in the armpit is close
to the worst place to meet it, and “fragrance” as a single word on the
label tells you nothing about which specific compounds are inside. On Native’s
US stick, the coconut-vanilla smell you are buying the product for lives entirely
inside that one undisclosed word at position nine.

Pencil sketch of Nib, a small round creature, holding a magnifying glass over the Native Coconut and Vanilla deodorant stick, looking from the front label to the ingredient list on the back. — Front of the stick in one hand, the list in the other. Nib lines up what the label promises against what it ranks.

So what is the honest read of this label?

Nothing here is a scandal. It is a competent, well-selling natural deodorant, and
every ingredient has a job. The gap is only ever between the front and the back: the
stick is named for coconut, the coconut oil is sixth, the dominant ingredient is a
processed coconut fraction, the scent is a separate fragrance at nine, and the work of
keeping you from smelling is done by baking soda and magnesium hydroxide up at four and
five. None of that is hidden — it is printed on the back, in order, for anyone
who reads it. Which is the whole job of this desk.

Named-for ingredient: Cocos nucifera (coconut) oil — position 6
Largest ingredient: Caprylic/capric triglyceride — a processed coconut/palm fraction, position 1
Actual deodorizers: Sodium bicarbonate (4) and magnesium hydroxide (5)
Source of the scent: Fragrance — position 9, not the coconut oil at 6
Label read: Retailer listing TCIN 75567578 and Giant Food, both 11 Oct 2026

Frequently asked questions

Does Native Coconut & Vanilla contain real coconut oil?
Yes — cocos nucifera (coconut) oil is on the label at position 6. The
largest ingredient, caprylic/capric triglyceride, is also coconut-derived but is the
fractionated form rather than whole coconut oil.

Where does the coconut-vanilla smell come from?
From “fragrance” at position 9, which is a separate ingredient from the
coconut oil at position 6.

Does this deodorant contain baking soda?
Yes. Sodium bicarbonate — baking soda — is at position 4, in the top five by weight. Native also sells a separate “Sensitive” version
that replaces it with magnesium oxide.

Is baking soda in deodorant bad for you?
It is the most common reason people report underarm irritation from natural
deodorants, because it is alkaline against acidic skin. But the dermatology literature
has not established a clear safe concentration, and plenty of people use it without any
problem. If it has bothered you before, that is the ingredient to avoid.

Pencil sketch of Nib closing a notebook beside the Native deodorant stick, a page showing the number 6, satisfied at having read the whole label. — Label read to the last line. Nib closes the notebook: the front said coconut, the list said sixth.

October 11, 2026

YTTP Superfood Air-Whip: The Kale Is the 10th Ingredient

Youth to the People’s Superfood Air-Whip
moisturizer is named for kale, spinach and green tea. On the label, kale is the
10th ingredient, green tea the 11th and spinach the 15th, in a list of
thirty-seven entries. The first nine — water, glycerin, caprylic/capric
triglyceride and squalane among them — are where the moisturizing work
actually happens.

A product called Superfood is making a promise with its name, and the
promise is specific: kale, spinach, green tea. These are the ingredients on the
front of the carton and all over the marketing. So the honest thing to do is read
the back, in order, and see where those three actually land — because US
labels are printed in descending order of how much is in the jar, which means the
list itself tells you something the front never will.

Pencil sketch of Nib, a small round creature, holding a magnifying glass up to a tub of Superfood Air-Whip face moisturizer, starting to read the ingredient list at the top. — Nib picks up the tub with kale, spinach and green tea on the front, and starts reading at ingredient one.

What’s in it, in order?

Here is the full ingredient list for the current Superfood Air-Whip
Lightweight Face Moisturizer with Hyaluronic Acid, as published on the
major US and Australian retail listings that carry it, including Kohl’s and Mecca.
Every listing carried the identical list when they were read between
22 September and 8 October 2026; the retailer
pages carry the standard note that “the list of ingredients is subject to change,
please consult the packaging of the product purchased,” so treat this as the label
as published in that window rather than a reading off a jar in your hand:

Aqua/Water/Eau, Glycerin, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride,
Pentaerythrityl Tetraethylhexanoate, Pentylene Glycol, Betaine, Squalane,
Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil/Sunflower Seed Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice
Powder, Brassica Oleracea Acephala Leaf Extract [Kale],
Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract [Green Tea], Chamomilla Recutita
Flower Extract, Medicago Sativa Extract/Alfalfa Extract, Sarcosine,
Spinacia Oleracea/Spinach Leaf Extract [Spinach], Copper PCA,
Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate, Hydroxyacetophenone, Menthoxypropanediol,
Pentaerythrityl Tetra-di-t-butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate, Sodium Hyaluronate, Sodium
Hydroxide, Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate, 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid, Panthenol,
Tocopherol, Hydrogenated Lecithin, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer,
Carbomer, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Glucoside, Citric Acid, Glycine Soja
Oil/Soybean Oil, Limonene, Chlorphenesin, Phenoxyethanol, Parfum/Fragrance.

The bracketed plain names are mine, added for readability; everything else is
the published INCI, in its published order.

Pencil sketch of Nib tapping a pencil on the tenth line of a long numbered ingredient list, where the word KALE is circled, with nine lines above it. — Ten lines down, past water, glycerin and squalane, Nib finds the first superfood.

Where do the superfoods actually land?

US cosmetic labels list ingredients in descending order of concentration, but
only down to the 1% line. Below 1%, a manufacturer may list ingredients in any
order (US FDA, Cosmetics Labeling Guide, 21 CFR 701.3(f)(2)). That
rule is the key to reading any “hero ingredient” claim: position above the 1% line
is meaningful; position below it is not strictly ranked.

#	Ingredient	What it is
1	Aqua/Water	Solvent — the base
2	Glycerin	Humectant — the main moisture-drawing worker
3	Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride	Lightweight emollient oil
4	Pentaerythrityl Tetraethylhexanoate	Synthetic ester — skin-feel
5	Pentylene Glycol	Humectant / preservative booster
6	Betaine	Humectant
7	Squalane	Emollient — listed three places above kale
8	Sunflower Seed Oil	Emollient oil
9	Aloe Leaf Juice Powder	Botanical, typically a small addition
10	Kale (Brassica Oleracea)	First superfood — the name ingredient
11	Green Tea (Camellia Sinensis)	Second superfood
15	Spinach (Spinacia Oleracea)	Third superfood
24	3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid	The “Vitamin C” — a stabilized derivative
36	Phenoxyethanol	Primary preservative
37	Parfum/Fragrance	Fragrance blend — list also names Limonene at #34

So the three superfoods start at #10 and run to #15, sitting behind the water,
the humectants and the emollient oils. Can I tell you they are below 1%? Honestly,
no — and I want to be careful here, because that is exactly the kind of claim
that sounds precise and isn’t. Position #10 is after aloe powder, which is usually
a small addition, so the superfood block is plausibly down near that 1% line; but
the label alone does not prove it, and the brand does not publish concentrations.
What the list does show, without any guessing, is the ranking of what the
formulator put the most of: water, glycerin, caprylic/capric triglyceride and
squalane. Those are the moisturizer. The superfoods are supporting players.

None of that makes it a bad product. Glycerin and squalane are well-proven, and
a gel-cream built on them will moisturize perfectly well. The gap is only between
the name and the ranking: a jar called Superfood leads, by
weight, with the same humectant base as most of the category.

Pencil sketch of Nib holding a small leaf labelled KALE in one hand and a large bottle labelled GLYCERIN in the other, looking between them. — A leaf at number ten, the glycerin doing the heavy lifting up at number two. Nib keeps the ranking straight.

What does research say about kale and green tea on skin?

This is where it gets genuinely interesting rather than just underwhelming,
because kale and green tea are not inert — they are ingredients with real,
if modest, evidence, and the evidence has a number attached to it.

A 2025 review of kale in cosmetics
(Molecules, October 2025)
gathers the antioxidant and skin-conditioning work on kale extract. The topical
studies it describes used kale at roughly 2–5% — one serum at 5%
reduced a collagen-degrading enzyme markedly over the test period. Green tea is
better studied still: a small 2024 clinical trial
(green tea 3% cream, 36 subjects, 2024)
found a 3% green tea extract cream produced measurable improvement over eight
weeks, and reviews of green tea in skincare commonly describe around 5% as the
level where effects are reliably seen.

Hold those numbers next to the label. The studies that found an effect used
kale and green tea at low-single-digit percentages as the point of the
formula. Here they arrive at #10 and #11, below
the humectant base, at a concentration the brand does not disclose. I can’t tell
you what percentage is in the jar — nobody outside the lab can from a label.
What I can say is that the research showing a benefit used these extracts at levels
where they led the formula, and on this label they do not. That is a fair thing to
weigh before paying a superfood premium.

Pencil sketch of Nib at a desk comparing a lab beaker labelled 5% to a tiny dropper, a research paper open beside the ingredient list. — The studies used a few percent on purpose. Nib checks that against a superfood sitting tenth.

Is the “3 Weights of Hyaluronic Acid” claim on the label?

The listing advertises “3 Weights of Hyaluronic Acid.” On the label I can read,
there are two distinct hyaluronic compounds: Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate (#17)
and Sodium Hyaluronate (#21). A third, separately named HA form is not visible in
this list.

I’d rather flag that as an open question than call it an error, because there
are honest explanations. The brand may be counting a crosspolymer or a molecular-
weight variant that isn’t separately named under INCI rules, or the formula on
these retail pages may differ in some detail from the physical carton. What is
accurate to say is narrow and checkable: the label as published shows two HA
forms, and the marketing says three. If the third is in there, it is not
visible in the ingredient declaration I can read.

The “Vitamin C” is worth the same plain treatment. It is on the label as
3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid at #24 — a stabilized vitamin C derivative, not
L-ascorbic acid, and well down the list. A legitimate ingredient; just not the
same molecule as “vitamin C” unqualified, and not in a leading position.

So is the Superfood Air-Whip worth it?

If you want a light, water-and-glycerin gel-cream with a squalane emollient and
some botanical extras, this is a competent one, and plenty of people clearly like
how it feels. If you are buying it because of the kale, spinach and green
tea — expecting those to be the active heart of the formula — the
label says they are supporting players ranked below the base, at a concentration
the brand does not publish.

If you would rather use a face moisturizer whose emollient is the thing it
leads with, that is the sort of product we make: our
beef tallow moisturizer
is built around tallow and a short supporting cast rather than a long botanical
tail. (Full disclosure: Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil
Goods, so that one is ours.) It is a different philosophy, not a cure for
anything — shorter list, emollient first. Whether that suits your skin is
genuinely a matter of preference and what your face likes.

FAQ

Where is the kale in Youth to the People Superfood Air-Whip?
Kale (Brassica Oleracea Acephala Leaf Extract) is the 10th ingredient in a list of
thirty-seven. Green tea is 11th and spinach is 15th. Water, glycerin,
caprylic/capric triglyceride and squalane are all listed ahead of them.

Are the superfoods below 1%? The label does not prove it. US
rules let ingredients under 1% be listed in any order, and the superfood block
sits just after aloe powder, so it is plausibly near that line — but
position alone is not proof, and the brand does not disclose concentrations.

Does the green tea do anything at that position? Green tea
extract has real evidence in skincare, but the clinical work that found effects
used it at roughly 3–5%, as the point of the formula. The concentration in
this product is not disclosed, and on the label it sits 11th.

Is the “3 Weights of Hyaluronic Acid” claim accurate? The
label as published shows two distinct HA forms, Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate and
Sodium Hyaluronate. A third separately named form is not visible; whether it is a
crosspolymer or a weight variant not separately listed is an open question.

Is the “Vitamin C” in it real vitamin C? It is
3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid, a stabilized derivative of vitamin C, at position #24. It
is a legitimate ingredient but not L-ascorbic acid, and it is well down the list.

When was this label read? The ingredient list was taken from
the major US and Australian retail listings that carry it, including Kohl’s and
Mecca, between 22 September and 8 October 2026, where every listing
matched. Retailers note the list can change, so check your own carton.

Pencil sketch of Nib closing a notebook beside the Superfood tub, a page showing the number 10, satisfied at having read the whole label. — Label read to the last line. Nib closes the notebook: the front said superfood, the list said tenth.

October 10, 2026

Olay Collagen Peptide 24: There Is No Collagen In It

There is no collagen in Olay Regenerist Collagen Peptide 24 Face Moisturizer. Reading its full label top to bottom, nothing named collagen, hydrolyzed collagen, or soluble collagen appears anywhere. The “collagen” in the name is a single peptide — Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 — sitting at position #10, between Pro-Vitamin B5 and a mushroom extract.

It is one of the best-selling “collagen” moisturizers at US drugstores, and the name does a lot of work. “Collagen Peptide 24” reads like a jar of collagen. So I pulled the label and read it the way I read every label: top to bottom, counting where the hero actually lands.

Nib shows up for the collagen cream with an empty jar and high hopes.

Is there any collagen in Olay Collagen Peptide 24?

No. Here is the full ingredient list for the fragrance-free face moisturizer, quoted verbatim, with the hero marked:

Water, Glycerin, Niacinamide, Isohexadecane, Dimethicone, Isopropyl Isostearate, Stearyl Alcohol, Polyacrylamide, Panthenol, Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4, Tremella Fuciformis Sporocarp Extract, Tapioca Starch, C13-14 Isoparaffin, Caprylyl Glycol, Dimethiconol, Laureth-7, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Glucoside, Palmitic Acid, Stearic Acid, Cetyl Alcohol, Behenyl Alcohol, Disodium EDTA, PEG-100 Stearate, Titanium Dioxide, Polymethylsilsesquioxane, 1,2-Hexanediol, Phenoxyethanol

Read the whole thing and the word collagen never appears. What the brand calls “Collagen Peptide” is the INCI name Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 — better known by its trade name Matrixyl. It is a short five-amino-acid chain that signals skin cells to make more of their own collagen. It is not collagen, and it does not contain collagen. That is not a gotcha unique to Olay; topical collagen is a large molecule that does not pass into skin, which is why serious formulas use signaling peptides instead. Olay’s own Canadian ingredient page explains this distinction plainly — the shelf name just does not carry the same nuance.

The label says collagen. The ingredients say otherwise.

Where does the peptide sit on the label?

Position #10, near the midpoint of the list. It follows five emollients and emulsifiers — isohexadecane, dimethicone, isopropyl isostearate, stearyl alcohol, polyacrylamide — that each typically make up a few percent of a cream, plus panthenol at #9. By the usual reading of an ingredient list, everything below roughly position six or seven is under one percent. So the peptide is almost certainly a fraction of a percent of the jar.

That is not automatically a problem. Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 is active at tiny doses. The trouble is the label alone does not tell you the dose, and Olay does not disclose it.

What’s on the front

“Collagen Peptide 24”

What’s actually in the jar

Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 (Matrixyl), a collagen-signaling peptide — no collagen

Its label position

#10, around the midpoint of the list

Disclosed concentration

None

Position ten of twenty-eight. You have to go looking for it.

Does the concentration actually matter here?

It matters, and it is genuinely hard to know. The peer-reviewed work on this peptide is encouraging about its mechanism: a 2025 review of peptides for skin aging describes how Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 prompts fibroblasts to produce collagen and other matrix proteins, and a 2026 mechanistic review notes it activates the TGF-β signaling pathway that builds collagen and elastin. The double-blind studies that showed an effect used it at roughly three to four parts per million — about 0.0003%.

The catch is disclosure. A dermatology trade piece from July 2026 put it bluntly: most over-the-counter products list Matrixyl without disclosing concentration, and it advises looking for the peptide in the top half of the ingredient list. Here it sits at #10 — around the midpoint — with no number attached. The industry safety review backs up how small these doses run: the CIR assessment of pentapeptides records a maximum leave-on use level of 0.0012% across the formulas it surveyed. So the honest read is not “this is too weak.” It is “the amount is unknown from the label, and the research effect was demonstrated at a very specific low dose this jar may or may not hit.”

Twenty-eight ingredients to copy out, and still no number next to the peptide.

What should you look for instead?

If what you want is a peptide you can actually find on the label, look for a peptide that is both named clearly and sitting high enough that it is plausibly present in a meaningful amount. GHK-Cu — copper tripeptide-1 — is a well-studied example, a genuine copper-peptide complex with a documented role in collagen and elastin synthesis rather than only a signaling fragment.

Full disclosure, because this site is published by the team behind Evil Goods: our own Copper Peptide Blue Honey Cream is built around copper tripeptide-1 and lists it near the front rather than burying it at #10. That is not me telling you it outperforms Olay in a trial — I have no head-to-head data and will not pretend otherwise. It is me pointing at a formula where the peptide is named and positioned where you can see it. Compare the labels yourself; that is the whole point of this desk.

Frequently asked questions

Does Olay Collagen Peptide 24 contain collagen?

No. The full label contains no collagen in any form. “Collagen Peptide” is the marketing name for Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4, a collagen-signaling peptide.

What is Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4?

A five-amino-acid peptide, trade name Matrixyl, that signals skin cells to produce collagen. The CIR notes it is a subfragment of type I collagen propeptide — derived from collagen, but not collagen itself.

What does the “24” mean?

Olay’s product copy ties it to 24 hours of hydration. The brand does not publish a formal definition, so treat that as marketing shorthand, not a measured figure.

Is a peptide at position #10 useless?

Not necessarily — this peptide works at very low doses. But the concentration is not disclosed, so the label alone cannot tell you whether it reaches the level used in the studies.

If you are weighing a serum against a cream for peptides, we wrote up how the two formats compare — also ours, and also a label-first read rather than a sales pitch.

One small peptide, somewhere under one percent. Nib was hoping for more collagen than that.

October 9, 2026

Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream: Where the ‘Recoverstem Peptide’ Sits on the Label

Charlotte Tilbury relaunched Magic Cream with a “World-First Recoverstem™ Peptide” at the centre of its marketing. On the current US ingredient list, the item that most likely corresponds to that claim — Trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmine) extract — sits at position 22 of 47, behind water, a dozen texture and emollient ingredients, and nine other botanical oils and extracts. Charlotte Tilbury’s own evidence disclosure for it says “in vitro testing” only. Two well-studied ingredients, Ectoin (#24) and sodium hyaluronate (#25), sit just behind it with no billing at all.

Magic Cream is one of the better-known faces of prestige skincare: $105 for 50 ml on charlottetilbury.com (fetched 2026-10-08), which works out to about $2.10 a millilitre, and it is stocked at Ulta, Harrods and Nordstrom. The current pots carry a “NEW! supercharged formula” flag, and the headline ingredient is what Charlotte Tilbury calls a “World-First Recoverstem™ Peptide” — a blend it says contains “over 100 Peptides extracted from the Stem Cells” of the “Eternal Jasmine Youth Plant™.”

That is a lot of trademark symbols for one sentence. So let’s do the plain thing the packaging quietly discourages: read the ingredient list on the back, in order, and find where the star actually stands.

How do you read position on an ingredient list?

US cosmetic labels follow an ordering rule. Under FDA regulation 21 CFR 701.3, ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration down to 1%; below 1%, they may be listed in any order (§701.3(f)(2); see also the FDA Cosmetics Labeling Guide). So a high position means “more of this than the things below it,” a low one means “less,” and the label never gives you an exact percentage. It is a ranking, not a recipe.

There is one honest caveat for this particular formula. On many products a single, predictable preservative — phenoxyethanol, capped at 1% in the EU — acts as a rough marker for where the sub-1% zone begins. Magic Cream doesn’t use phenoxyethanol; it uses a different preservative system (sodium benzoate, 1,2-hexanediol, caprylyl glycol and ethylhexylglycerin), so there is no clean single marker to point at. What we can say with confidence is narrower: the opening stretch of the list — the water and the texture base — is almost certainly the highest-volume part of the formula, and the marketed botanicals, including the star-jasmine extract, all begin well behind it.

Nib, a small round pencil-sketch creature, peers through a magnifying glass at a tall pot of Magic Cream, running a finger down the long ingredient list printed on the back. — Nib does the thing the front of the jar hopes you won’t: counts down the list, in order, to slot twenty-two.

What is actually in the first twelve slots?

Here is the current list verbatim, from Charlotte Tilbury’s US product page (charlottetilbury.com/us/product/charlottes-magic-cream, read 2026-10-08), reproduced identically at Ulta and Harrods on the same day:

Aqua/Water/Eau, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Glyceryl Stearate SE, Butylene Glycol, Isononyl Isononanoate, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Dimethicone, Cetyl Alcohol, Glycerin, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Pentylene Glycol, Polyester-7, Avena Sativa (Oat) Kernel Extract, Hydrolyzed Viola Tricolor Extract, Nasturtium Officinale Extract, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Gigartina Stellata Extract, Camellia Oleifera (Camellia) Seed Oil, Rosa Canina Fruit Oil, Rosa Damascena Extract, Michelia Alba Leaf Oil, Trachelospermum Jasminoides Extract, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice Powder, Ectoin, Sodium Hyaluronate, Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Ascorbyl Tetraisopalmitate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Steareth-21, Carbomer, Neopentyl Glycol Diheptanoate, Tocopherol, Hydrogenated Rapeseed Oil, Potassium Cetyl Phosphate, Dimethiconol, Propanediol, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hydroxide, Sodium Phytate, Caprylyl Glycol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Sodium Benzoate, 1,2-Hexanediol, Linalool, Citronellol, Geraniol, Beta-Caryophyllene

The list runs to forty-seven lines. The first twelve are water, a run of emollient esters (C12-15 alkyl benzoate, isononyl isononanoate, caprylic/capric triglyceride, ethylhexyl palmitate), a silicone (dimethicone), an emulsifier (glyceryl stearate SE), a fatty alcohol (cetyl alcohol), two humectants (butylene glycol, glycerin, pentylene glycol), and a synthetic texture polymer (polyester-7). None of these is named in the key-benefit panel on the product page.

That is not a criticism. This is where the cream’s famously cushiony, luxurious feel comes from, and a pleasant texture is a perfectly legitimate thing to build and to pay for. It just means that the “feel” people love is the work of the first dozen ingredients, not of the trademarked plant that gets top billing.

Nib holds up two labelled cards, a towering one reading Water and Emollients and a much smaller one reading Star Jasmine, weighing them on a set of pencil-drawn scales that tip hard toward the big card. — Twelve texture ingredients sit ahead of the star. The hero is a long way down the queue.

Where does the “Recoverstem Peptide” actually sit?

Count down to position 22 and you reach Trachelospermum jasminoides extract. Trachelospermum jasminoides is star jasmine (also called Confederate jasmine), an ornamental vine native to East Asia. Charlotte Tilbury brands it the “Eternal Jasmine Youth Plant™” and describes Recoverstem as a blend of over 100 peptides extracted from its stem cells.

One honest note on the identification: Charlotte Tilbury does not publish a map from its branded names to INCI names, so the link between “Recoverstem” and this specific extract is not something the brand states outright. Trachelospermum jasminoides extract is the ingredient in the list that most plausibly corresponds to the Recoverstem claim, and it is the item an independent analysis of the formula pointed to; treat that as a well-reasoned inference rather than a confirmed fact.

Taking that identification at face value, here is the company it keeps. At position 22, the star-jasmine extract sits behind:

What comes before it	Positions	Marketed as a hero?
Water	1	No
Texture and emollient base (esters, silicone, emulsifier, fatty alcohol, humectants, polymer)	2–12	No
Oat, pansy and watercress extracts	13–15	Oat only, as part of a blend
Shea butter, red algae, camellia oil, rosehip oil, damask rose, magnolia leaf oil	16–21	Some, individually
Trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmine) extract — “Recoverstem”	22	Yes — the lead hero

Nine other botanical extracts, oils and butters — several of which Charlotte Tilbury doesn’t bother to name in its marketing — are present in greater or equal quantity than the ingredient the whole relaunch is built around.

Nib inspects two folders side by side, a thick one labelled Ectoin stuffed with papers and a thin one labelled Recoverstem holding a single sheet stamped in vitro. — The marketed hero carries a thin, lab-only folder; the quiet ingredient behind it carries a fat one.

What does “World-First peptide, backed by research” actually rest on?

This is where the care matters, so let’s be precise about what is claimed and what is shown. On Charlotte Tilbury’s own Recoverstem explainer page (charlottetilbury.com/us/content/recoverstem-peptides, read 2026-10-08), the evidence is described like this:

“Through our in vitro testing, results showed that Recoverstem™ Peptide helps boosts the five key biomarkers.” [*Based on in vitro testing on Recoverstem™ Peptide.]

The asterisk and the “in vitro” wording are Charlotte Tilbury’s own. In vitro means tested on isolated cells or tissue in the lab, not in a trial on people. That is a normal, legitimate early step for a cosmetic ingredient — it is not a scandal, and plenty of the industry works exactly this way. It is simply a different, lighter grade of evidence than a human trial.

For scale, the FTC’s Health Products Compliance Guidance (December 2022) spells out what the strongest advertising language would require: “In vitro studies look at a product’s effect on isolated cells or tissues and may help identify a possible mechanism of action, but similarly are of limited value to predict benefits for humans,” and such studies, “without confirmation by human RCTs… aren’t sufficient to substantiate health-related claims.” Charlotte Tilbury’s US product page is careful here — it talks about reviving “the look of” skin, an appearance claim, rather than using the strongest “clinically proven” wording that appears on some of its non-US pages. The point isn’t that anyone broke a rule. It is that the in-vitro disclosure, in the brand’s own small print, is a modest footing for a “World-First… 10 years of research” headline.

What peer-reviewed literature exists on this plant isn’t about skincare at all. The only published body of work on the genus covers calming and pain-related activity studied in a Traditional Chinese Medicine context, and it notes plainly that “information on toxicity evaluations and randomized clinical trials for the genus Trachelospermum plant is very limited” (Sheng et al., 2018, PMC6151751). No public study was found on topical anti-aging peptide use of this extract, and Charlotte Tilbury’s proprietary research isn’t available to read. So the most accurate statement is not “there is no evidence” — the company may hold data it hasn’t released, which is common — but rather: no peer-reviewed data for this ingredient’s marketed benefit is publicly available.

Nib sets down the magnifying glass and jots a short honest note on a pad that reads a plant extract, called a peptide, at twenty-two, looking thoughtful rather than cross. — The finding is small and checkable: a plant extract, marketed as a peptide, sitting at position 22.

What’s the ingredient the label doesn’t brag about?

Here’s the twist that makes this formula interesting rather than just over-marketed. Directly behind the star jasmine, at positions 24 and 25, sit two entries with a far sturdier evidence record — and Charlotte Tilbury barely mentions them.

Trachelospermum jasminoides extract (#22) — “Recoverstem Peptide”: The marketed hero. A botanical extract that the brand says contains plant-derived peptides. Evidence disclosed for the benefit: in vitro only. No public peer-reviewed data for the skincare claim.
Ectoin (#24): An amino-acid-derived osmoprotectant from extremophile bacteria, with multiple published human studies for barrier support. Not named in Charlotte Tilbury’s key-benefit panel at all.
Sodium hyaluronate (#25): The salt form of hyaluronic acid, a standard, well-evidenced humectant for short-term hydration. Marketed simply as “Hyaluronic Acid.”

Read that back. The ingredient with the thinnest public evidence gets the “World-First” story and the trademark; the ingredient directly behind it with the thickest file (Ectoin) gets no billing. That is the honest tension in this formula — not that nothing in the pot works. Humectants hydrate, emollients soften, and this is a pleasant, well-made cream by most accounts. It’s that the marketing spotlight is pointed at the least-documented item in the jar.

Do the fragrance allergens at the bottom matter?

The last four entries — linalool, citronellol, geraniol and beta-caryophyllene — are fragrance components listed individually because EU rules (Cosmetics Regulation 1223/2009) require naming them once they pass a labelling threshold in a leave-on product; beta-caryophyllene was added to the labelling list by the 2023 amending Regulation (EU) 2023/1545. A retailer listing notes the cream contains “less than one percent synthetic fragrance,” so in absolute terms the fragrance load is low. For most people this is a non-event; if you patch-test positive to fragrance, their appearance on the label is useful information rather than a verdict.

What does a formula built on documented peptides look like instead?

If the reason you were drawn to Magic Cream was the peptide story, it’s worth knowing what a “peptide” can actually mean, because the word is doing a lot of work. A plant extract marketed as containing peptides is a genuinely different thing from a defined synthetic peptide such as copper tripeptide-1 or palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7 — molecules with a known structure and, in several cases, published human studies behind them. Interestingly, Charlotte Tilbury’s own previous Magic Cream formula carried exactly those synthetic Matrixyl peptides; the current one leads with the botanical instead.

If you want to see how a formula reads when it’s built around the synthetic-peptide route rather than a botanical named as one, our own team at Evil Goods writes about the trade-offs between a copper-peptide serum and cream — this site is published by the Evil Goods team, so treat that as ours, not a neutral pick. We point to it only because it answers the natural next question (“what does a copper-peptide formula actually look like?”), not as a like-for-like comparison: Evil Goods lists curated key ingredients rather than a full 47-line INCI, so lining its label up against Charlotte Tilbury’s full declaration would be comparing full transparency against a partial one. Different disclosure, different thing.

The short version

Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Cream is a well-made, nice-feeling moisturiser whose texture and hydration are doing real, legitimate work. The marketing simply points somewhere else: at a trademarked “World-First” plant extract that lands at position 22 of 47 and whose disclosed evidence, in the brand’s own footnote, is in vitro. Meanwhile the better-documented Ectoin sits one step behind it, unbilled. The INCI is published openly on every retailer’s page, so none of this is hidden — it’s just not the story on the front of the pot. Read the label, in order, and the hero turns out to be a supporting player.

Nib closes the pot of cream, tucks the pencil behind an ear and gives a small satisfied wave, a note pinned up behind reading read the label, in order. — Nib’s whole method, in four words: read the label, in order.

October 8, 2026

IT Cosmetics Confidence in a Cream: The Peptides Are #36 and #37

IT Cosmetics markets Confidence in a Cream on a “Peptide-Lipid Complex,” but the two peptides that make up that complex — Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 and Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7 — are ingredients 36 and 37 in a 38-item list, sitting below the fragrance allergens and just above the perfume itself. Two of the cream’s other headline ingredients, niacinamide and squalane, are near the top and backed by disclosed percentages. The peptides are not. Here is where each one actually sits.

Confidence in a Cream ($49 for 2 oz) is one of the most reviewed anti-aging moisturizers on the shelf, and its pitch leans on niacinamide, squalane, and a branded “Peptide-Lipid Complex.” Niacinamide and squalane hold up to a reading of the label. The third is the one worth slowing down on — not because anything is hidden, but because the word “complex” does a lot of quiet work.

Nib, a small round pencil-sketch creature, holds a magnifying glass up to a jar labelled Confidence in a Cream, squinting at the fine print on the back. — Nib reads the back of the jar, not the front.

What does the ingredient order actually tell you?

US cosmetic labels follow a rule most shoppers never learn: ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration, but only down to 1%. Below that threshold, a brand may list the remaining ingredients in any order it likes. That rule comes from the FDA’s labeling regulation at 21 CFR 701.3, and it is the whole reason label position is readable at all. Above 1%, order means something. Below it, order means almost nothing — which is itself a kind of information, because it tells you an ingredient is in the “under one percent” group.

So the useful trick is to find a marker whose typical use level is known, and read everything after it as “at or below roughly that.” The standard marker is a preservative.

Nib runs a pencil down a long ingredient list pinned to the desk, counting the entries with the pencil tip. — Thirty-eight entries. Nib counts them twice.

Where is the “Peptide-Lipid Complex” on the label?

Here is the full ingredient list for the standard SKU, read from the IT Cosmetics product page (itcosmetics.com, product ITC_1137, read 2026-10-07) and matched word-for-word against a second major US retailer’s listing for the same SKU (read 2026-10-07):

AQUA / WATER / EAU, GLYCERIN, NIACINAMIDE, CETEARYL ALCOHOL, HYDROXYETHYLPIPERAZINE ETHANE SULFONIC ACID, GLYCERYL STEARATE, SQUALANE, DIMETHICONE, MYRISTYL MYRISTATE, ETHYLHEXYL PALMITATE, BUTYROSPERMUM PARKII BUTTER / SHEA BUTTER, PHENOXYETHANOL, PEG-100 STEARATE, CAPRYLYL GLYCOL, SODIUM POLYACRYLATE, TOCOPHEROL, CITRIC ACID, SODIUM HYALURONATE, CAPRYLIC/CAPRIC TRIGLYCERIDE, PENTYLENE GLYCOL, PENTAERYTHRITYL TETRA-DI-T-BUTYL HYDROXYHYDROCINNAMATE, HYDROLYZED RICE PROTEIN, CERAMIDE NP, ADENOSINE, TRISODIUM ETHYLENEDIAMINE DISUCCINATE, COLLOIDAL OATMEAL, HYDROXYPALMITOYL SPHINGANINE, BUTYLENE GLYCOL, LIMONENE, CARAMEL, CITRAL, LINALOOL, CARBOMER, SODIUM LACTATE, POLYSORBATE 20, PALMITOYL TRIPEPTIDE-1, PALMITOYL TETRAPEPTIDE-7, PARFUM / FRAGRANCE.

Count to the end. There are 38 entries. The two peptides that IT Cosmetics names as the “Peptide-Lipid Complex” land here:

Position	Ingredient	How it is marketed
3	Niacinamide	“4% Niacinamide” — disclosed, and the position agrees
7	Squalane	“3% Squalane” — disclosed, and the position agrees
12	Phenoxyethanol	Preservative. The sub-1% marker.
18	Sodium Hyaluronate	“hyaluronic acid” — below the marker
23	Ceramide NP	“barrier” — below the marker
29 / 31 / 32	Limonene / Citral / Linalool	fragrance allergens, listed individually
36	Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1	“Peptide-Lipid Complex”
37	Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7	“Peptide-Lipid Complex”
38	Parfum / Fragrance	end of list

The two peptides are the last two functional ingredients on the label. They sit below the three fragrance compounds the EU requires to be named individually, and above only the perfume base itself.

Nib points the pencil near the very bottom of the list, eyebrows raised, having found the two peptides sitting just above fragrance. — The thing on the front of the bottle, found near the bottom of the list.

Does a low position mean the peptides do nothing?

No — and this is the part the position alone cannot tell you. Peptides like these work at parts-per-million levels. The CIR safety review of these exact ingredients (Johnson et al., International Journal of Toxicology, 2018) reports typical use concentrations under 10 ppm, with surveyed maximums around 0.002%. A more recent framework paper (PMC, 2026) puts the leave-on maximum for this class at roughly 20 ppm. At those levels, a peptide belongs exactly where it sits — at the bottom of the list, in the sub-1% group. A peptide near the top would be the surprising thing, not this.

IT Cosmetics’ limited-edition version of the cream discloses a “2.5% Peptide-Lipid Complex.” If the two peptides are each present at ppm levels, then most of that 2.5% is the lipid carrier the peptides are delivered in, not the peptides themselves. That is how peptide raw materials are sold — a trade blend, a small active fraction in a larger carrier. It is not a trick. It is worth saying out loud only because “Peptide-Lipid Complex” on the front of the jar invites you to picture something the number 36 does not support.

What holds up here, and what to weigh?

Credit where it is due: IT Cosmetics states 4% niacinamide and 3% squalane on the page, and both sit above phenoxyethanol, which is consistent with those numbers. That is more transparency than most brands offer, and the formula is a genuinely well-built moisturizer on those two counts. The peptides are the one place where the marketing and the label part ways — not in honesty, but in emphasis.

If you are specifically shopping for a peptide moisturizer — one built around peptides rather than led by niacinamide and squalane with peptides at the end — the question becomes what a formula designed around that active actually looks like. We make skincare at Evil Goods, and we put our copper peptides on their own line for exactly this reason; we wrote up why that was a deliberate formulation choice here (that is our site). Read it as one answer to the question, not as a like-for-like swap: our product page shows a curated key-ingredient panel, not a full INCI declaration, so it is not a fair position-by-position comparison against IT Cosmetics’ complete list. Different disclosures, different claims — judge each on its own label.

Nib taps the pencil on the word PHENOXYETHANOL midway down the list, drawing a small line to mark the one-percent boundary. — Nib marks the preservative — the line everything below sits under.

One note for sensitive skin

Three fragrance allergens — limonene (#29), citral (#31), and linalool (#32) — are listed separately from “parfum,” which under EU rules means each is present above the 0.001% leave-on labeling threshold. Sensitization to these is real but uncommon, and the clinic figures that exist (around a few percent of already patch-tested patients, per SCCS opinions) are drawn from people who self-select for sensitivity. If you have a known fragrance allergy, this is worth a glance. If you do not, it is just context.

Frequently asked questions

Where do the peptides sit in Confidence in a Cream?: Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 is position 36 and Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7 is position 37 of 38, just above the fragrance base.
Does that mean the peptides are useless?: No. These peptides are used at parts-per-million levels (CIR 2018), so a low list position is expected rather than alarming. Position tells you concentration band, not whether an ingredient works.
Are the niacinamide and squalane claims accurate?: They are consistent with the label. IT Cosmetics discloses 4% niacinamide and 3% squalane, and both sit near the top of the list, above the preservative, which matches those figures.
Why does the limited edition say “2.5% Peptide-Lipid Complex”?: That figure refers to the whole commercial complex, including the lipid carrier the peptides are delivered in — not to the peptide dose itself.

Nib sets the magnifying glass down, satisfied, next to a tidy note that reads: position is not the same as dose. — Position is a signal, not a verdict. Nib writes it down and moves on.

October 7, 2026

Author: Sean Elias

What is actually in Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream?

Where does the 4.5% squalane actually sit?

Why does the preservative tell you where the glacier is?

What about the Pro-Ceramides?

So is Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream a bad moisturizer?

FAQ

What’s actually at the top of the Clinique bottle?

Where does the urea Clinique markets actually sit?

What is lanolin alcohol doing at position 9?

What sits at the very bottom of the panel?

Does “allergy tested” mean anything on a label?

FAQ

Where does hyaluronic acid sit on the Salt & Stone Stick?

So which Salt & Stone product actually contains hyaluronic acid?

Why do two countries’ labels for the same Stick disagree?

Does the hyaluronic acid’s position mean the deodorant is bad?

What should you actually check before you buy?

FAQ

What is actually in Drunk Elephant Protini?

Where do the peptides actually appear?

Is the copper peptide in Protini the one the research is about?

What is everything below position eighteen?

So is Drunk Elephant Protini worth it?

FAQ

What does “30% Hyaluronic Acid Complex” actually mean?

Where does the hyaluronic acid actually sit?

What is the silicone at position 2 doing?

What about the “72-hour hydration” claim?

So is it a good buy at $55?

Frequently asked questions

What does the Native Coconut & Vanilla label actually say?

Where is the coconut oil — and is the #1 slot coconut too?

Why does a “natural” deodorant make my armpit burn?

What about the “fragrance” at position nine?

So what is the honest read of this label?

Frequently asked questions

What’s in it, in order?

Where do the superfoods actually land?

What does research say about kale and green tea on skin?

Is the “3 Weights of Hyaluronic Acid” claim on the label?

So is the Superfood Air-Whip worth it?

FAQ

Is there any collagen in Olay Collagen Peptide 24?

Where does the peptide sit on the label?

Does the concentration actually matter here?

What should you look for instead?

Frequently asked questions

How do you read position on an ingredient list?

What is actually in the first twelve slots?

Where does the “Recoverstem Peptide” actually sit?

What does “World-First peptide, backed by research” actually rest on?

What’s the ingredient the label doesn’t brag about?

Do the fragrance allergens at the bottom matter?

What does a formula built on documented peptides look like instead?

The short version

What does the ingredient order actually tell you?

Where is the “Peptide-Lipid Complex” on the label?

Does a low position mean the peptides do nothing?

What holds up here, and what to weigh?

One note for sensitive skin

Frequently asked questions