The term ‘filler’, commonly recycled in skincare and hair circles, is derived from a definition originally formed in the food industry. Food “fillers” aka additives are used in place of typical ingredients to help lower production costs and bulk up food products.

First of all, I want to reassure everyone that there are no “filler” ingredients in your hair products. This myth has been busted a few times on the skincare side of the internet but it’s somehow made its way into the natural hair space and before anyone starts throwing away heaps of perfectly good products allow me to present a bit more information.

From what I’ve seen online, most people assume filler ingredients are anything that isn’t an active ingredient or well-known oil (e.g. hydrolysed silk protein or coconut oil) but our hair products are a bit more complicated than that. For starters, 99% of the time, each ingredient on an ingredients (INCI) list serves more than just one purpose. For example, whilst glycerin is an amazing humectant¹ that can prevent moisture from leaving the hair, it can also act as a stabiliser by stopping water from leaving the product - for a fun science project: try leaving the lid off of your hair gel for a week and let me know what happens. Even if you’re someone who only cares about product functionality; preservatives, solvents and other stability enhancers are non-negotiables that, if left out, would make for either, or most likely, both an unsafe or unusable product.

I also feel like I need to address the whole “pure” ingredients thing. I’ve typically seen this side of the “filler” debate crop up in discussions surrounding “why natural products are superior” and “why you should only be using ingredients in their pure form.” Now, I personally love a good natural oil in my routine. Coconut oil - love her or hate her - does my hair justice and you’ll see some other fan favourites (s/o ms. Argan oil) in a lot of high performing formulations. However, if you were to look at a lot of these oils under a microscope you would quickly discover that they don’t have a single chemical structure and are actually almost always made up of a mixture of fatty acids and esters with varying chain lengths i.e. not “pure” materials.

All in all, fear mongering is a poor marketing strategy that the cosmetic industry and those who profit from it consistently use to sell products unfortunately. Do not fall for it. So, while I can’t knock a decent marketing strategy - at the end of the day we’re all here to make money - what I can do is give you all the tools to dispel some of the misinformation and make informed decisions about your purchases.

‍

Till next time,

P3ACHx

‍

¹Humectant - substances that attract water from the air or from deeper in the skin usually with the purpose of creating moisture.