Podcast 326: Have we been wrong all along about natural vs synthetic in beauty?

You probably check the ingredients list on your skincare. You might even avoid certain synthetics and reach for products that sound more natural.

But what if the “natural” version of an ingredient and the synthetic version are, chemically speaking, exactly the same thing? And what if the real difference has nothing to do with what the ingredient is, but how it was made?

That’s the question Lorraine Dallmeier has been sitting with after a string of recent podcast interviews with ingredient suppliers — and it turns out the answer is more complicated, and more interesting, than the beauty industry’s natural versus synthetic debate usually allows for.

In this week’s Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine unpicks why the source of an ingredient has long been dismissed as mere marketing, and why one recently published study might be about to change that.

“The clean beauty movement’s obsession with source might have accidentally stumbled into scientific validity, even if for completely different reasons than they originally claimed.” — Lorraine Dallmeier

Key takeaways:

• Why formulators choose natural ingredients goes well beyond the “natural is better” argument. At Formula Botanica, students formulate with botanical ingredients for reasons that are layered: the proven efficacy of plant oils, butters, and herbal infusions; a sense of cultural connection to ingredients like shea and chamomile that carry centuries of traditional use; and the belief that the natural colour of a formulation is proof of its authenticity. There’s also emerging evidence that organically grown ingredients may achieve greater potency, because plants boost their phytochemical production when stressed by pests in the absence of pesticides. That’s a material difference, and it’s one driven entirely by growing conditions.
• For chemically identical molecules, source has long been hard to defend scientifically. Hyaluronic acid from rooster combs and hyaluronic acid from bacteria are the same molecule. Squalane from shark liver and squalane from olives should be indistinguishable once processed. Lorraine has spent years giving the honest answer to the “is natural actually better?” question: well, not always. Most natural versus synthetic debates have collapsed into storytelling about which narrative makes the beauty shopper feel more comfortable, rather than any measurable difference in what lands on their skin.
• A study from Phycus Biotechnologies may be about to change that. Their fermentation-derived glycolic acid showed statistically significant lower irritation than conventional petrochemical glycolic acid in IL-1α studies, published in SOFW journal, a German trade publication. The hypothesis is that conventional glycolic acid made via formaldehyde carbonylation carries trace impurities such as sulfates, formaldehyde residues, and dichloroacetic acid, whereas the fermentation-derived version carries gentler impurities — amino acids like glycine that cells naturally produce anyway. Lorraine hasn’t seen the study herself, but she takes the claim seriously enough to lay it out in full.
• If the finding holds, it shifts the question formulators need to ask. It’s no longer just “what is this ingredient?” but “how was it made?” Right now, formulators weighing conventional against fermentation-derived ingredients are balancing lower-impact credentials against price premiums. If there are measurable performance differences in irritation and skin tolerance, that calculation changes entirely. Dozens of companies are fermenting everything from squalane to collagen alternatives, and each one claims to perform better. Some of those claims are marketing. Some may turn out to be more than that.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share, subscribe and review this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Youtube so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.

Lorraine Dallmeier

Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetic science school. Read more about Lorraine and the Formula Botanica Team.