Herbnerd
Forum Replies Created
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When we moved from our old manufacturing site to a new site; our QA manager at the time drew up new site plans and asked our auditor to review them. The auditor came up with a few things he would like to see and the QA manager updated the plans to include comments from the auditor.
This was certainly cheaper than paying someone to do the plans for us.
BTW - Operations manager took those plans and ignored them and built something incompatible with future plans. We moved into the new site and he promptly resigned!
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No reliable way.
Most companies hide their IP by stating ranges for their ingredients. Even with experience, you can sort of guess the approximate ratios - but may not be exactly right.
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Is this an annual subscription? If so, what is the cost for this?
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Often it is around the purity of the ingredient in question - and sometimes there is no difference at all. Food products tend to have a higher purity (lower heavy metals and other contaminants) because we ingest more food and smaller quantities of pharma and in theory, not ingesting cosmetics.
Generally (at least here in NZ) the main difference can be who is selling what and the agreements they have with various agencies. One supplier has the agency for food products and another has the agency for pharma and yet another has the agency for cosmetics.
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Raspberry ketone as a multifuntional has been out a lot longer than March this year - the article you posted dates from February 2021.
I looked at it as part of a reformulation of a natural toothpaste. But being a flavour (raspberry ketone is primary a flavour ingredient) it obviously imparted a distinct raspberry flavour. Depending on your intended product, you may have distinct raspberry notes to cover. But we never progressed further than a lab sample. It has also been used previously as a weight-loss supplement (I doubt it was effective anyway).
We ended up using potassium sorbate.
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Charcoal is just wood burned without oxygen. Charcoal is just ‘activated’ using steam - all it does is increase the surface area to increase absorption capacity.
I can’t see it in the NPA list, nor on Natrue. However, this would be acceptable by Natrue because Charcoal would be considered a natural product.
But if I were to look to the Australian definition of ‘natural’ it would include very few ingredients - even something as simple as Lavender oil would be considered synthetic because steam distillation does not exist in nature.
By all means use a natural standard - but it comes at a cost. Weigh up whether the cost of an external audit is outweighed by the sales of that product meeting that standard. If it does, it may not be worth it.
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Do you think MoCRA will follow the EU with their 82 Mandatory allergens or the old 26 allergens used by a few other countries or publish a list of their own?
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I can help you with toothpaste - but I need a lot more detail of what you are trying to achieve and the formula with which you are working.
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Its not the worst.
The worst would have to be some hippy-made product where they included ‘love’ as an ingredient. I wish I had photographed it now!
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Technically you are wanting to make fluid extracts rather than tinctures. Tinctures tend to be 1:5 extracts or lower. 1:3 to 1:1 are fluid extracts and are not as simple to make.
The menstruum (liquid portion) to herb tends to be lower and the herb content much higher - Equal parts herb and menstruum in the case of 1:1 to one part herb to 3 parts menstruum in the case of a 1:3.
The menstruum needs to be appropriate for the herb you are extracting. Some herbs only require 25% ethanol/water, others require 90% ethanol/water. This depends very much on what you are extracting - resins require a higher ethanol content.
The actual technique is too long for me to explain here - just google it if you are determined to make your own extracts.
However, for cosmetic use, the fluid extracts (or tinctures) tend to get evaporated down to remove the ethanol (and maybe some of the water) and then diluted with glycerol.
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Just wondering if it is oxidation of the unsaturated fatty acids in the apricot kernal oil that is causing the colour change. I am unfamiliar with some of the other oils used.
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You can probably remove the colour. But from a herbalist point of view, the colour will be from the actives extracted from the plant - Anthocyanins are red/blue, tannins tend to be red/brown (think tannins from tea), catechins from green tea - brownish. Curcumins - yellow
Remove the colour and you will just be left with water & glycerol (or whatever these extracts are extracted in).
As for whether they are active/functional - highly improbable since they will be so highly diluted any bioactives will be far below any therapeutic levels to do anything anyway.
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Happy birthday Perry. I’d get my ukulele out and play/sing Happy Birthday - but I can’t play ukulele and neither can I sing!
Enjoy your day
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There are a huge number of options to what one might call ‘natural colourants’ but most depend very much to whether you are working to a natural standard such as COSMOS or Natrue or some other standard. For example in Australia, the standard of what is considered natural is very tight. Elsewhere this definition can be a lot looser.
Natrue has a lot of nature identical pigments and colours permitted for use in formulae. But the real problem is deciding what to use and when.
A lot of plant sourced natural colours are unstable - Chlorophyllins work best in alkali media, they go from green to yellow to clear in an acid medium. Something I wasn’t aware of when my boss wanted me to add Chlorophyllin to a silica gel toothpaste. It faded pretty quickly in stability trials
Curcumins fade very quickly - and go from yellow to clear in sunlight
Anthocyanins change colour depending on pH (they can be used as pH indicators)
Mineral pigments may or may not be permitted depending on your product, application and market.
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I’ve sold a number of formulations in the areas of food and dietary supplements and infant formula and cosmetics. The level of information I give is quite detailed.
I tend to include the formula, any specific manufacturing instructions, raw material suppliers used, packing instructions (including packaging suppliers) regulatory, allergy information, free-from statement (if required) and any certification details required.
Perhaps some may say I give away too much information - but since the customer is paying for it, they may as well have the whole lot.
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Essential oils can help. Common ingredients include menthol (usually extracted from Mentha arvensis (Field mint); also methyl salicylate - this can be synthetic (cheap) or natural as wintergreen oil (expensive option and only about 70% methyl salicylate). You will find products such as deep heat rely heavily on these two - you can include capsicum extracts, black pepper oil, camphor too.
These have such wide and common usage that you should not have difficulty sourcing or formulating with them
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For those who missed it, it was a great webinar.
For me, I wasn’t expecting to be called out for my 5 am attendance NZ time. I’ve shared this with my colleagues.
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I actually had this discussion with my boss this morning. He was ‘unaware’ of this and wondered what we have done to mitigate the situation.
Thankfully I have emails dating back almost a year appraising him of the situation.
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We are not US based - but our company has decided that the USA is to be our next ‘home base’ and so far everyone is oblivious to MoCRA. I’ve discussed it, sent emails out defining what needs to be done and by when.
Nope - I’m just putting in road-blocks. Oh well, they will find out soon enough and I have an email trail to back me up.
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Absolutely.
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I guess that is corporate life.
One company buys out another, then employs ultracrepidarian managers who not only have no experience of the industry we are in but know enough to tow the company line with their pretty powerpoints and incomprehensible jargon where we have ‘medium term event horizons’ and the need to ‘litigate’ with other team members.
Meanwhile, in this company there are two people who actually do have industry experience propping up an organisation with deep pockets and zero competency.
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“When clients embark on creating “natural” cosmetics, they often lack a
clear direction. Consequently, the product design phase becomes
challenging, resembling herding cats. Clients may resort to unreliable
online sources to scrutinize unfamiliar raw materials.”Now substitute clients for Marketing and you have totally describes the marketing team at the company where I work! I mean, they cannot decide on timings, namings of projects and generally cause all round confusion - let alone give an ordered brief.
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I would suggest you manufacture your extracts separately and combine later; however, be aware that tannins can bind and precipitate alkaloids and also muscilage - for this reason alone you should extract each herb independently - but you also need to be aware that they can still interact once combined as an extract.
To do a 1:1.5 extraction you need 750 g of herb to 1 kg of liquid. Glycerol is not really assisting in extraction - so perhaps max 20% glycerol purely as a preservative. But it would be better to extract with 20% ethanol:water, evaporate to remove the ethanol and a portion of the water and add glycerol to about 50%.
To extract this amount of herb in so little liquid you will need to employ a percolation method - there are enough videos on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exnzhhcnmQ I can’t find anyone one who doesn’t look like a hippy or a prepper) -and I have not watched the video throughout!) but essentially you need a funnel, or as they have used here, a bottle that has been cut to remove the base, and pack powdered herb into the funnel - with some of the extraction fluid poured on top. Once it has hydrated all the herb, a tap is opened, and remaining liquid added and the herb extract drips out of the bottom. Excess fluid is evaporated off to concentrate the herb extracts precisely.
A similar method is used commercially.
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@chemicalmatt Thanks for that - greatly appreciate your response.
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Fair comment; though in many countries such products are also considered a medical device. However, sometimes it does come down to the wording on the pack.
Treating vaginal dryness would be a medical claim and thus a medical device in many countries.