Happy Friday everyone! Meet Catherine, who is a great example of someone who truly uses sunscreen like they should! More power to her.  She spends her days working, chasing around her bulldog (awesome!), and training for a 1/2 marathon (double awesome!), and she keeps the sun off all the while. Read on!

Name: Catherine

In the shower…

Outside the shower…

Finishing touches…

So…Sunscreen queen! Is anyone else training for a race or otherwise spending a lot of time outside and have an active sunscreen that’s been working well?

Image via

Sad we didn’t do a deal last Friday? Well, we’re making it up to you with a brand new partner and a really killer one today. Let’s meet Futurenatural, shall we? We love the look and feel of this site, and we dig the attitude too: “We’re not anti-science, we’re not blindly for nature, and we don’t profess to be perfect.” While the store carries many of our favorite staples—Kahina, RMS, Intelligent Nutrients, John Masters and so on—they also have some brands that we haven’t seen anywhere else. And this week’s deal will introduce you to something awesome!

Before we get to that, just one more thing: Futurenatural sells Scotch Naturals, our new favorite nail polish line. If you’re looking for an exciting color for the spring or summer, we HIGHLY recommend you throw one of these into your basket. Okay, that’s it! Onto the good stuff…

Here’s the deal: We’ve been on a face sunscreen kick lately, so with any order over $25 Futurenatural is offering you a free brand-new face sunscreen by ECO (Logical) (from the people who brought you Soleo Organic Sunscreen which—spoiler alert!—is one of our favorites). UPDATE: APPARENTLY THEY ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH SOLEO–OUR BAD! SOLEO IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL AS A BRAND. This puppy — ECO Logical All Natural Sunscreen Lotion, FACE (SPF 30) — is water-based, is not oily (for those of you who don’t like the slickness of some other screens), absorbs amazingly with no white cast, and wears like a dream under makeup.

Simply enter the promo code ECO checkout to get your freebie.

Recap: Spend $25, get a FULL SIZE free face sunscreen. Boom!

Note: The free product will ship automatically with anyone using the code even though it won’t show up during checkout.

Here’s the complete and awesome ingredient list:

Active Ingredients: zinc oxide 20%
Inactive ingredients: Purified water, Isoamyl laurate, capric/caprylic triglyceride, sorbitan stearate, sucrose cocoate, caprylyl glycol, cetearyl alcohol, cetearyl glucoside, hydroxypropyl starch phosphate, polyhydroxy stearic acid, xanthan gum, cucumis sativa (cucumber) seed extract, rosa canina (rosehip) seed oil, camellia sinesis (green tea) extract.

Happy trails, and have a great (and hopefully sunny) weekend!

P.S. Futurenatural ships to Canada for a flat rate of $20 up to five pounds.

It’s part two of our series! A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the Natural Products Expo here in So-Cal. This giant trade show is like Disney Land for health buffs—virtually every natural (or so-called natural) brand under the sun has a booth there, where they dole out their samples all day long.

While it was primarily devoted to food, the natural beauty presence at the show has grown a lot. So you can imagine that I got a little excited and a lot overwhelmed as I searched for new brands!

But of all the products I saw at the Natural Product Expo, this sunscreen from an Australian company called Grahams made one of the biggest impressions. Here’s why: This super-clean sunscreen is made up of more than 25% zinc oxide, and yet it leaves NO FILM. Like, none.

Grahams SunClear SPF 30 Natural Sunscreen

First of all, I adore the texture. While it looks like it cream, it applies like a natural oil—which means it’s a little shiny at first, but it absorbs super fast. It feels so hydrating and I’ve worn it a few times now under makeup and for a girl who rarely wears sunscreen (eeks, I know!), I’m feeling like a convert.

One of the main ingredients is rosehip oil, which is a favorite of companies like Pai and Evan Healy, so it’s no wonder this stuff feels good. Here’s the full ingredient list off the bottle:

Active ingredient: 25.9% Zinc Oxide

Ingredients: Capric/Caprylic Triglycerides, Rose Hip Oil, Grapeseed Oil, Sesame Seed Oil, Shea Butter, Vegetable Oil, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Coconut

Now, a few important notes: Do not use this product if you don’t like coconut oil, or the smell of coconut (both things I happen to love). That’s what Caprylic Triglycerides are, and the addition of actual coconut at the end imparts a decidedly tropical smell—though it’s a very natural one. This ain’t Hawaiian Tropic, I promise. Also, the formulation they sell in Australia contains phenoxyethanol, but the U.S. formulation—which is the one we are recommending—DOES NOT (and the product does not contain water so there are no bacteria concerns). Just don’t get confused when you see phenoxyethanol listed on their site.

Another note: This product is not marketed solely as a face product, and it comes in a fairly large bottle. It is all-purpose, and would be great as a body block and perfect for kids too!

So, where can you buy it here? For now it looks like you can get it on Amazon, but we recommend you call Evolue (310-289-1560) instead, and Jean will send it to you. We were together at the Expo and discovered it together—and she immediately decided to carry it at her shop.

So now you’ve read about two of our favorite screens. What’s your favorite?

We asked you last week if you wear sunscreen every day and we’re pretty sure you broke our record on number and length of comments (if you haven’t yet weighed in, and haven’t yet seen the awesome still of Spicoli, please click here). Now we want to get started, but first a checklist that we are using to consider the performance of a screen:

• It can’t cause zits.
• It can’t cast us in a white glow.
• It can’t be make us look like we’ve been rolling around in vaseline.
• It can’t be overly matte either.
• It has to work well.
• It has to wear well under makeup.
• It can’t smell gross.

Obviously all product considerations produce a sort of mental check list in our minds, but sunscreen is especially tough because there’s a demand for form and function that you just can’t fake. With an antiager, you can’t tell right away if it works (probably because most don’t! Ha.). But if a sunscreen doesn’t work, you’re a sad, burned mess.

To get the ball rolling on our Five Face Sunscreens We Love series, I’ll start with a vegan one.

100% Pure’s Argan Oil Moisturizer SPF 30

I test drove this puppy in New York for a couple of weeks and liked it a lot, but let’s be real: a sunscreen that performs on a girl who spends all day inside in an overcast city isn’t exactly groundbreaking. But I just got back from five days with Alexandra in sunny Los Angeles, where we spent a lot of time outside (for me, anyway), and I am happy to report that it worked like a charm! No burns, no major freckling, nada.

The lotion feels very light. Though it’s technically a moisturizer, it’s definitely too light for me on its own for hydration. I have been using a plumping, hydrating hydrosol and another day cream under my 100% Pure and have been loving it. It’s very cosmetically appealing: it feels light on my face, makeup sits nicely on top of it, and it hasn’t caused any breakouts—all of which made me wonder how good it could possible be as a screen, which is where the ingredients come in:

Ingredients: Active Ingredients: 24.8 % Zinc Oxide

Inactive Ingredients: Organic Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice1, Rgania Spinosa Kernel (Argan) Oil, Rosa Canina Seed (Rosehip Oil) Extract, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Extracts of: Euphorbia Cerifera Cera (Candelilla Wax), Organic Camellia Sinensis (Green Tea) Leaf2, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf, Origanum Vulgar (Oregano), Thymus Vulgaris (Thyme), Citrus Grandis (Grapefruit Seed) Seed, Hydrastis Canadensis (Goldenseal), Lonicera Caprifolium (Japanese Honeysuckle) and Cinnamomum Zeylanicum Bark (Cinnamon)

Big high five on this one! Stay tuned for the next four. Have you tried one you love?

That’s right, this week over at GOOD we’re talking about your face—and what you don’t want near it. For those of you who have read the book, this top-10 list of bad chemicals will likely be familiar. Hey, nothing wrong with a little refresher, right? Here’s the repost:

A quick skim of this list reads like a prescription from Dr. Obvious. Clearly nobody wants lead or petroleum on their faces, right? But if you’ve been reading this series, our blog, or our book, you know that the cosmetics industry uses all kinds of ingredients in its products—some dangerous, some just plain confusing. What many of them have in common is that that don’t belong anywhere near our largest organ.

Here’s why: Many of them have pretty damning scientific data on record. They’re also not doing anything for your appearance—and in some cases they may be making matters worse. And thus, here is our mantra: If you can’t be sure a product is safe, and it isn’t doing your looks any favors, why bother using it? With that in mind, here’s a top-10 list of common ingredients, contaminants, and byproducts that are bad for your health and duds for your face.

	1. Petroleum and related petrochemicals The danger risk for this group of ingredients ranges from a mellow yellow to code red. Petroleum distillates are toxic solvents used in mascara, hairspray, and callus treatments. But your run-of-the-mill moisturizer probably contains something like mineral oil or paraffin in it, which are not considered dangerous per se, they’re just really, really bad for the environment and they suffocate the skin and may interfere with perspiration.
	2. Lead-tainted lipstick In 2009 the FDA discovered that of 20 lipsticks it tested, 20 were contaminated with lead. In many cases, the lead levels exceeded those set by that same FDA for candy—and since they don’t set restrictions for cosmetics, this feels like a fair model of comparison, right? Not so according to the FDA, which claims that we don’t eat our lipstick. Lead is a neurotoxin and lipstick goes on our mouths, which combine to make this debate officially ridiculous. Go for organic small-batch lipstick lines, or kiss a beet instead.
	3. Formaldehyde-leaching preservatives Our crusade for clean cosmetics started after the discovery of formaldehyde in a hair treatment (and later in our nail polish), but this known carcinogen is also “donated,” as the pros like to say, by preservatives such as quaternium-15, DMDM-hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, and diazolidinyl urea. That means it’s both pervasive and often unlisted, not appearing as an ingredient on labels. It’s considered a human carcinogen by many health agencies worldwide, and when it’s not giving rats nose cancer, it might still be giving you a rash.
	4. Fragrance It’s broken-record time, but here goes: Fragrance is in everything from your fancy perfume to your face wash. It represents a concoction of mystery ingredients, whose secrecy is protected by industry-ass-kissing trade laws. Lab studies by the EWG have shown them to contain a whole cocktail of hormone disruptors(among other things). Which is nice, since our hormones regulate, oh, everything: genital size, fertility, weight, acne, and beyond.
See the next five Images by Brianna Harden	5. Parabens This popular preservative group used in more than 10,000 products became very controversial when their presence was discovered in the tissue of breast tumors. What that data actually means is hotly debated but studies have shown that certain parabens mimic estrogen, the female sex hormone. This could be bad news for both men and women. Look for ingredients on the label with “paraben” as a suffix to avoid these bad boys.