Are there any ingredients that could indicate a product is low-quality?
Ingredients on the back of the bottle are ordered by quantity. “The baddies that you want to look out for… is your mineral oil, your sodium lauryl sulfate, parfum, benzel peroxide” being high up on the ingredients list, Miss Truman says.
The BBC sent ingredients lists of two BHA 2% salicylic acid toners with similar packaging to Dr Bhate. One is typically sold for six times the price of the other.
Dr Bhate says the the list of active ingredients in both products “looks pretty similar, no red flags,” but she notes the products have different formulations with solvents and humectants, which break down ingredients and hydrate the skin respectively.
“This will likely lead to varying performance between the two products,” she says.
Dr Bhate also looked at the ingredients lists for two serums with similar branding, one from a luxury skincare brand and one from a supermarket.
She says that though they have “lookalike packaging”, the budget product “doesn’t appear very similar in terms of ingredients” and the higher-end formula “seems more complex with barrier lipids and more marine extracts”.