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Bug food
I want to know what are the common ‘bug foods’ in cosmetics?
How can we work around them, if incorporating them in our formula for claims?
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10 Replies
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Aloe, lecithin, plant extracts, clays and clay derived ingredients, proteins and anything that can be described as food (milk, honey, fruit purees, fruit juices). I am sure there is more.
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ngarayeva001 said:Aloe, lecithin, plant extracts, clays and clay derived ingredients, proteins and anything that can be described as food (milk, honey, fruit purees, fruit juices). I am sure there is more.
Thank you for your response.
Could you answer the second part of my question?
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Additionally, surfactants, emollients, amino acids, sugars. Different microbes eat a lot of different things.
To minimize the problems, use less. Keep pH out of growth range. Reduce water activity. Use closed packaging. Use chelating agents. And use standard, proven effective preservatives.
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How to work around them? You’d need to be specific about what you’re trying to prevent from growing. And the conditions you’ll be preventing them under.
Phenoxyethanol fights different guys than potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, etc. -
Perry said:Additionally, surfactants, emollients, amino acids, sugars. Different microbes eat a lot of different things.
To minimize the problems, use less. Keep pH out of growth range. Reduce water activity. Use closed packaging. Use chelating agents. And use standard, proven effective preservatives.
That is helpful advice. Thank you.
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Most “prebiotic” and “probiotic” ingredients (particularly ferments and filtrates) are also bug food.Emulsifiers like Montanov 68 (Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Glucoside) make great bug food, too. Any alkylpolyglucoside emulsifier, really. You’d be surprised how quickly mold attacks it!
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RedCoast said:Most “prebiotic” and “probiotic” ingredients (particularly ferments and filtrates) are also bug food.Emulsifiers like Montanov 68 (Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Glucoside) make great bug food, too. Any alkylpolyglucoside emulsifier, really. You’d be surprised how quickly mold attacks it!
That’s new. Thanks for sharing. What stable W/O and O/W emulsifiers would you recommend?
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My emulsifier selection is limited, and I’ve mostly worked with O/W emulsions, so I can’t give you a recommendation on the best W/O emulsifiers.Out of the O/W emulsifiers I’ve had so far, I like Ritamulse (Glyceryl
Stearate, Cetearyl Alcohol, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate) the most. It’s nice, silky, and easy to work with.I don’t like Olivem. It tends to create soapy/draggy lotions and is more difficult to work with. -
Think the “bug food” concept is largely fiction. Bugs can matabolize most of the ingredients in cosmetics, and cepacia, for one, can grow to large numbers in distilled water.
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Bug food and food in general relies always on least available nutrient. In case of microbes in cosmetics, iron, phosphorous, and nitrogen can be limiting factors. Hence, a cocktail of ingredients composed of carbon and oxygen in water will be not much worse than just water. Add lecithin (P and N), clay (trace minerals), and/or plant extracts (everything) turns it into a wonderfully rich nutrient broth.
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