Allantoin in sunscreens and cosmetic-beauty products
Virtually all allantoin used in cosmetic or beauty products are derived from Cow and pig urine and feces. However in virtually all the literature even the scientific ones it appears to be said in the same breath as comfrey. It’s like everyone wants you to think that when you see the word allantoin it’s being derived from the herb comfrey. Nothing could be further from the truth. That is why Nature’s Skin and Body Food would never use this substance in our product line unless we did our own extraction with organic comfrey leaves or root. At this point in time it is just to cost prohibitive to do that. I’ll explain. Years ago after developing our proprietary herbal extraction process I experimented with extracting elements out of comfrey including allantoin.
Here is a quick breakdown of what would be involved with that. For allantoin to be effective it either needs to be a 0.4% solution or a 2% ointment. An effective allantoin formulation is difficult to prepare from comfrey due to the low and variable content of this substance. Hart (1976) reported that dried comfrey leaves contain 0.1 to 1.6% allantoin while dried roots have 0.4 to 1.5%. Since fresh leaves are 85% water, they could not contain more than 0.2% allantoin. It would require aproximately 10lbs of dried comfrey leaves per quart of water to produce a 0.4% solution that would be effective. Now to maintain that effectiveness-for example to use allantoin in sunscreens. We need to convert our liquid into an ointment. let’s say a 4oz tube of sunscreen. So to receive any kind of benefit from our comfrey extracted allantoin we going to end up using around 5lbs of comfrey.
At todays wholesale price for organic comfrey leaves or root it is going to be around $8.00/lb
That is $40.00 for just one ingredient for our 4oz tube of sunscreen. And that is why you will never see anyone using comfrey extracted allantoin in their products. It will be allantoin from cow and pig feces and urine. You can buy that much cheaper. Next time I will talk about why you would never use that animal feces-urine derived allantoin expecially in a sunscreen. If you haven’t checked out our new organic sunscreen, you should. Yours in Great Health and Ageless Beauty
Bill Jordan
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