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If your answer is yes, then don’t worry as a lot of people get confused between these product categories. In order to provide you with more clarity, we’ve explained the properties and their respective benefits between these product categories. Although these products have become very popular with Indian consumers, there’s still confusion when it comes to the base difference as many properties of these products seem to overlap.
Herbal products
The word Herbal originated from the medieval Latin liber herbails (“book of herbs”).
- Herbal products are composed of extracts from plants, leaves, and flowers, etc.
- These products are also useful for improving one’s health and various therapeutic reasons.
- All herbal products are claimed to be free of chemicals. However, it involves pesticides for growing the ingredients for these products.
Ayurvedic Products
- Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word that means “life knowledge”, and it is known for its natural ways to treat conditions.
- Ayurvedic products have their origin from ancient medical science.
- These products are formulated using various indigenous herbs. However, the composition of ayurvedic products also contains heavy metals like sulphur, gold, silver, tin, copper, mercury, and even some animal ingredients.
Natural Products
- These products are manufactured with nature-derived ingredients such as plants and minerals.
- Natural products are formulated without the involvement of petroleum or mineral oil-derived ingredients. Further, these products are free of preservatives, synthetic fragrances, and other additives.
- However, other chemicals are used to enhance these natural ingredient’s growth, including pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
Organic Products
- These products are made from natural ingredients and are free from any toxic chemicals such as pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides.
- The ingredients are derived from plants that are grown with a few approved methods, including biodiversity conservation, cultural integration, and ecological balance promotion.
- For organic products, healthy fertile soil is developed to replace nutrients from the land by previous crops, while adding organic materials to the soil such as compost.
- Organic products are not tested on animals which implies that they are cruelty-free.
| Herbal | Ayurveda | Natural | Organic |
| Made from plants, leaves and flowers. | Made from herbs and heavy metals etc. | Made from plants and minerals | Made from natural ingredients |
| Free from chemicals. However, pesticides are used for the growth of the plant. | Contain toxic levels of metal | Fertilizers are used for growth of the plants | Free from fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides etc |
| No global or local standards available to ensure purity | Global and local; standards available in India to ensure purity | Global and local standards available to ensure purity but not everywhere | Many Global and local standards available to ensure purity |
Are Organic and Natural skincare products the same?
If you think that natural and organic are the same thing, the answer is no. Natural skincare is formulated with ingredients derived from nature, but it might contain artificial ingredients that can’t be grown naturally. And there is no supervision over it.
On the other hand, organic beauty products undergo rigorous testing standards to ensure 100% purity. These products are supervised by certified bodies such as EcoCert, NaTrue, OneCert, which makes these beauty products incredibly gentle, safe, and potent.
