Review: Weleda Skin Food

This blog has been neglected during my final weeks in Australia, which were a mad rush of trying to pack up everything into a storage unit, sort what I wanted to bring to Kazakhstan, stress about visa paperwork arriving on time, and saying goodbye to everyone at home.

I’ve been in Kazakhstan for 10 days now, and as I write this I’m sitting at home on sick leave with a sprained ankle. One product that has absolutely saved me since being here is the amazing Skin Food by Weleda. I picked this up at home, and the couple of times I tried it during the Australian summer I felt it was too thick and greasy, although I loved the scent. But over here, where my first week was entirely below zero outside and I’m stuck 9 hours a day inside a very dry school, I find that Skin Food is doing exactly what I want it to. The sunflower seed and almond oils along with lanolin (bad luck if you’re vegan) are incredibly moisturising.

I’ve been applying it a few times a day, especially after using the school bathrooms with their conventional chemical-laden soaps that feel like they strip every bit of moisture out of my hands. The combination of essential oils also have an aromatherapeutic effect on me. Settling into a new job is always stressful, especially in a new country, so applying Skin Food and just inhaling the scent helps calm me. According to the ingredients list, Skin Food includes rosemary, calendula and chamomile, and the “parfum” blend of essential oils is not listed, most likely for proprietary reasons.

I had never really liked using hand creams because my skin always felt greasy afterwards, and the climate I lived in never overly demanded it. But now that using one has become a necessity, Skin Food is likely a product I will always have on hand, although there are other creams I’m curious to try. Note: technically this can be used anywhere that requires some extra moisture, but as it’s too thick for my face and I’ve got a fantastic body lotion I’m using at the moment I haven’t tried it anywhere else yet.

INCI: Water (Aqua), Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Lanolin, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Alcohol, Beeswax (Cera Flava), Glyceryl Linoleate, Hydrolyzed Beeswax, Fragrance (Parfum)*, Viola Tricolor Extract, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf Extract, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Calendula Officinalis Flower Extract, Cholesterol, Limonene*, Linalool*, Geraniol*, Citral*, Coumarin*. * from natural essential oils.

Haul from NHW

The health food shop in my home town has 20% all its regular prices on the first Tuesday of the month, and due to my upcoming move to Kazakhstan, where I’m not expecting to be able to buy a lot of natural products, I went in yesterday and picked up a few items to take with me. Here’s what I got:

Weleda Skin Food — I had tested this out at a few different health food stores over the past few weeks and I really like the smell. Seeing as I’m moving to a desert that’s currently in subzero (Celsius) temperatures, I figure a really good moisturising cream was needed.

Weleda Plant Gel Toothpaste — I already have a few natural toothpastes I’ve picked up to take overseas, but I realised that none of them are under 100g/mL, and I need something on the plane with me. I picked this one up as it’s only 75g, and it looked nicer than their salt flavour and because I have no idea what ratanhia even is.

MooGoo Fresh Cream Deodorant x2 — as I mentioned in my review, I love this stuff and wanted to make sure I had backups. The one I’m currently using is practically empty, so one of these will be opened before I get on the plane.

Australia Bush Flower Essences — After reading Sarita’s posts on flower essences at Peace on the Skin & Peace Within and numerous other bloggers writing about Lotus Wei products, I became intrigued with this type of product. I decided to go with Australia Bush Flower Essences because my patriotism always kicks in stronger when I’m about to leave the country, I figure these might also help fight homesickness, and they have a wider range of remedies than Lotus Wei offers. I picked up Emergency, which is supposed to help calm anxiety, Travel, to help combat jet lag, and Abund, which encourages you to open your life to more opportunities. I’m still somewhat skeptical about whether these will actually do anything, but they still smell pretty, so I can at least use them as oils if nothing else. I’ll put up a post once I’m in Kazakhstan to share my thoughts on whether the jet lag was easier this time around from using the Travel essence.

I think I’ve now got most of the products I need (or think I need) before I relocate, although I’m bound to make a few more last minute purchases.

Review: MooGoo Fresh Cream Deodorant

Retails at AU$8.50 for 60mL/2fl.oz

My little sister has insanely sensitive skin with dermatitis and contact allergies. No joke: she worked in a fruit shop for a number of years until she discovered she was allergic to touching fruit, or most likely had a reaction to the chemicals used on them. So, my Mum, myself and our cousin Sarah are always on the look out for products that are supposedly good for sensitive skin. That’s how we first discovered MooGoo.

An Australian brand, MooGoo was started by a family who adapted the cream used on their cows’ udders to make it more suitable for human skin (i.e. non-greasy) after noticing that the natural ingredients used were better than most “human” products. The range has expanded over the years to include lotions, body washes, lip balms, hair care, cleansers, serums and even makeup.

Side note: my grandfather was a farmer until he retired aged 81, and he had cattle, among other animals. I have no idea when it started, but cows became my favourite animal. You know how some people have owls everywhere? I had cows. Thus, MooGoo is even more interesting to me.

I use a few different products from MooGoo, and will probably review them at some stage, but my favourite would have to be their Fresh Cream Deodorant. This was actually one of the first products I bought after deciding to go green, and it’s definitely a keeper.

It’s a deodorant, not an antiperspirant, and to be honest it took me a little to get used to the difference. If you didn’t know, antiperspirants actually block the sweat ducts with the aluminium ions entering the cells of the body, making them swell and block sweat glands (and if they’re blocking sweat, who knows what else they’re preventing our bodies from purging). Deodorants, on the other hand, allow the body to sweat but target odour-causing bacteria.

I absolutely love using this deodorant now. It’s not strongly scented, but it’s enough for me, and is non-irritating, even when used just after shaving. It’s in a convenient roller application, so no scooping and pasting required as many other natural deodorants demand. I’d highly recommend this to anyone looking for an easy option for this particular need. In fact, I’m buying a couple of extra bottles tomorrow to take in my suitcase to Kazakhstan.

Ingredients: Aqua, Magnesium Hydroxide (Milk Of Magnesia), Xantham Gum (Food Grade Thickener), Backhousia Citriodora Leaf Oil (Aussie Lemon Myrtle), Zea Mays (Corn) Seed Flour, Hamamelis Virginiana (Witch Hazel) Extract, Humulus Lupulus (Hops) Extract. (The website lists all ingredients, including a great little info table explaining each ingredient.)

Why I went green

So… my first post. I’ve been wanting to start a blog to reflect my journey into the world of natural beauty for a while, and decided to make it a new year’s resolution, so here we go.

Firstly, the background stuff. My name is Andrea and I’m in my early thirties. I started going green/natural about 12 months ago, when a checkup for an auto-immune disease I had showed that my health wasn’t improving at all, despite other lifestyle changes I had made. At that time, a friend started running a few workshops on homemade skincare so I went along, did a ton of Internet surfing and decided to cut toxins out of my skincare practices. Why? Many of the chemicals used in regular skin, hair and beauty products have been linked to cancers, etc. The skin is the body’s biggest organ and apparently what goes on, goes in (I have zero medical knowledge/experience, nor have I bothered reading any academic articles on the topic, so don’t take what I’m saying as gospel). I figured I’d give it a go.

When I began I kind of went all in and crazy. Most people recommend gradually phasing the green in, replacing item by item as each product runs out. I decided to go completely DIY instead. I got a heap of butters, oils and castile soaps and went on my way. I’ve finally settled on using a number of clean, green brands with the odd DIY thrown in. This blog will include my reviews and a few “recipes” as I go.

A few things to note: my skin is oily/combination and can be very blemish prone. My hair is hard to categorize: oily scalp and dry ends, so I normally go for a normal product to balance it out. I have a very fair complexion, and being Australian and living under the hole in the ozone layer (yes, it’s a thing — here I feel my skin start to burn hanging out a load of laundry) I burn very easily.

Oh… to make this adventure even more exciting, I’m moving to Kazakhstan in a few weeks (as soon as visa paperwork is all sorted and processed) to a small city in the middle of a desert where I don’t know if I’ll be able to source any of my usual products (I’ve found one pharmacy online that seems to stock Weleda, but that’s about it so far) so I’ll possibly have to rely on ordering online, with an apparently very slow postal system.

Disclaimer: I’m not the best at being consistent. I hope I can update this every week, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Feel free to send me messages to remind me to post 🙂