Uff Da

For years I've been purchasing shampoos from health food stores in the hope that they have fewer harmful chemical additives than the products that come off grocery- or drug-store shelves. I've perused their ingredients lists and thought, Hm ... this doesn't look much better. What am I actually buying, here? What am I absorbing through my scalp over and over again? Just because the manufacturer claims this stuff is free of poisons,  and I'm paying a premium price for it, doesn't mean I'm getting the natural product that I want.

At the Christmas market in town several weeks ago there was a lady from Norquay, Sask., with a table selling her homemade personal care products. I bought all her shampoo bars the moment I read their ingredients list:

- olive oil
- water
- coconut oil
- sunflower oil
- sweet almond oil
- soybean oil
- castor oils

Excuse me? No disodium sulfosuccinates? No olefin sulfonate? No decyl polyglucose? No sodium lauroyl sarcosinate? No sodium benzoate? No — ?

Well, you get the drift.

Just plain ingredients whose names I actually recognize. Woo hoo!

The shampoo suds up and does a great job. And it's inexpensive, too, compared to the big-batch commercial so-called healthy shampoos I've been using till now.

Check it out for yourself at her website: Uff da.

I will be ordering more when these are gone, and trying her other products, too.