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Listing Aloe vera juice at the top of the ingredient list
Hi all,
Are there any official guidelines explaining how to reconstitute aloe vera 200x into aloe vera juice? any article or document explaining this would be very helpful for me to explain to my customer. I don’t want them to think this is something I’m just inventing, instead I want them to see that this is something done in this industry.I want to take advantage of this since my customer doesn’t want to see Water as their main ingredient in the ingredient list. I’ve been looking for flower/fruit waters out there but they’re expensive. It seems like making aloe vera juice and adding it in my formula would be the most inexpensive way.Thanks in advance! -
9 Replies
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Good question. And difficult to answer. It depends on the overall concentration.
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Yes, there are official guidelines on how you are supposed to list ingredients. They are published in this book
If you are using water as the most abundant ingredient in your formula, you have to list WATER as the first ingredient.
Even if you are using flower and fruit waters you are still required to put WATER as the first ingredient. Companies that do not are not following proper labeling rules.The only way you can avoid listing water as the first ingredient if it is the most abundant is by ignoring the labeling rules. -
Perry, if I were to make a product that contained say, 90% aloe vera juice and 10% some other stuff, wouldn’t it be correct to begin the LOI with “aloe vera”?
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As far as I know there are no official guidelines for making a conversion from the powder to the juice - at least not in the EU. The conversion makes no sense anyway since it would then possible to have >100% of the Aloe vera juice in a formula.
@Belassi I would say it would in that case be correct to list the a.v.juice on top (in the EU) -
Thank you, David. I do actually have a product like that, we make it with 10x concentrate. I once got a nasty burn off the lab hotplate and put the 10x concentrate on it, straight from the bottle in the refri. It worked amazingly well, the pain disappeared pretty much completely. I find myself wondering just what is the optimum concentration for burn relief.
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I apologise for not answering the original question. I will do that now.
You have powder form AV concentrate at x200.First, it is inconvenient to handle as a powder when adding to a formula, partly because the weighing amounts will be so tiny with x200.Therefore I suggest as your first step, you make up some ready-use solution at x10 concentration. This is a simple dilution in distilled or deionised sterile water. Sterilise the containers with alcohol prior. If you’re not sure how to calculate it, then I or another forum member could no doubt reply.Keep the solution in the refri at 2 to 4C. If you will be keeping it more than a day or two you will need to preserve it.When you use it as an ingredient, it works like this. I’ll use a reference weight of 1 Kg, you can scale accordingly.Say I want a formula which is 50% aloe vera. OK that implies that if I were using x1 (simple extract) I would need 500g of aloe vera … 50/100 * 1000And the rest of the ingredients would total 500g.Since you now have x10 solution, we will only need one-tenth of that amount to achieve the same dilution. Therefore we use 500/10 or 50g of the x10 concentrate. The rest is now all the other ingredients.I think the conversion makes sense even at concentrations >100% because that’s normal in chemistry.Since you have access to the powder I suggest you might try finding a dilution that will yield a jelly or salve consistency, perhaps add binding, plasticiser and design a terrific burns/bruise treatment. -
I don’t know that it is specifically defined from a labelling perspective. The theory being that when you use Aloe Vera Powder Powder and you reconstitute it with water to Aloe Vera Juice, that your ingredient is Aloe Vera Juice.Now, if you are formulating an Organic product and you want to get NSF or NOP certification on your product, you must use Aloe Vera Juice or Aloe Vera Concentrate (not powder) as your ingredient. If you try using reconstituted Aloe Vera Powder in Water, you cannot count the water as part of your organic formulation. So, with Aloe Vera Powder, you only get to count the powder (assuming it’s organic), but not the water.So, this is in line with Perry’s comment that your ingredients are Water and Aloe Vera Powder, not Aloe Vera Juice. But, using a reconstituted Aloe Vera Powder and labelling your first ingredient as Aloe Vera Juice is very common practice by many companies. -
To be strictly correct about labeling, you’ve got to go with Perry’s definition - you are adding water, so you have to list water. This is why many companies still buy unconcentrated (1x) Aloe Vera Juice - using it is the only completely correct way to list Aloe Vera Juice as a main ingredient, even though the juice is mostly water.
The less correct way is to use a concentrated liquid, and reconstitute it as a separate formula, then use the result of that process as an ingredient in your batch. It’s mostly a paperwork trick, but this is what you have to do to satisfy NSF/NOP.The least legal way is what you’re describing - use a bit of powdered concentrate and claiming that it you’re making reconstituted Aloe Vera Juice rather than water plus powder. This is taking a risk, and it’s not something that I’d ever suggest doing. -
My advice is to use aloe vera juice and you would be in the safety part of the NSF/NOP rules, why reinvent the wheel.
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