[Herbnerd]

depending on how waxy it is, I would probably finely mill some high intensity sweeteners - Sucralose, Aspartame, Acesulfame Potassium (Ace-K), Stevia Thalin/Thaumatin etc and disperse throughout the lip-balm.

I have done flavoured fish oil softgels this way.

[Herbnerd]

It would probably be easier to use a protease and a low pH  to digest the proteins and release the vitamin C - but there is also the danger of the Ascorbic acid would oxide and disappear anyway.

[Herbnerd]

 I guess the best way would be to speak with the manufacturer to supply an assay method for protein encapsulated vitamin C. Most suppliers would supply this (well, in pharmaceutical fields at least).

However, I have my doubts - it doesn’t add up to me.

[Herbnerd]

Probably look at a high-school chemistry text book and remove anything you don’t feel is important for cosmetic chemistry might be the easiest place to start.

[Herbnerd]

Most of the verbosity surrounding logo redevelopment is really just marketing masturbation.

The logo looks fine, but CEO’s explanation of it is utterly meaningless. It has been written by marketing consultants to sell a re-developed logo to an idiotic CEO who then parrots it out to the general public as it the words actually mean something. A touch of the Emperor’s new clothes perhaps?

[Herbnerd]

If it is a fractionated coconut oil why not consider using a hydrogenated coconut oil?
Depending on the amount used, you should be able to retain some clarity.

In the course of my work, I have to do this sort of thing a lot - but clarity has never been an issue. We tend to use GMS, Beeswax, hydrogenated oils and the like.

[Herbnerd]

I can comment on the botanical part only.

The botanical extracts, such as Aloe, come as extract ratios. Aloe is a 200:1 extract, meaning that 1 g of the powder is equivalent to 200 g of the fresh inner leaf gel.

It doesn’t take a lot of maths to work out that in a 200 mL bottle, you could have 1 g of active and still be able to claim 100% activity!

[Herbnerd]

@pma - I read something about this a few months back. Using polyphase emulsions to stabilise vitamins in food.

Can’t quite remember the reason why they were doing this in foods though.

[Herbnerd]

You can get Sucrose BP, EP, USP/NF (Pharmaceutical grade not cosmetic
grade) - but as @Alchemist and @Duncan says, you will be charged a
premium for it and you would be better buying from the local cash and
carry store - unless of course, you do need Pharmaceutical grade for
some reason.

[Herbnerd]

In a previous life, I worked for a company supplying food products to supermarkets. Much of what was bought wasn’t so much because customer demand, but more by what supermarkets telling customers what they sell and then telling the manufacturers what the ‘customer wants’. Often the two are totally different.

I have seen similar trends in the dietary supplement industry - the manufacturers tell customers what they want - unless perhaps the miracle ingredient was featured on Dr Phil - and then everything is reactionary (I have seen products on the shelf within 2 weeks of Dr Phil shows).

I guess it is the same with cosmetic industry.

Trouble is, there is so much misinformation out there and if anyone mentions “Cancer” associated with any ingredient, whether proven or not, there is pressure against that ingredient.

[Herbnerd]

It is my understanding that antioxidants are almost sacrificial in their nature because they will reduce a number of other chemicals. They do this in the body - and this is why Vitamin C is hard to stabilise in an aqueous solution.

[Herbnerd]

Welcome back Perry, good to see this site running again, although it was a shame to have lost such a repository of information on some of those old threads.

I’m Rob Martin, a formulation chemist for the natural health industry, specialising in hardshell capsules, softgels, nutritional powders, tablets and the like.
I am currently studying Cosmetic Science to add those range of skills to my portfolio.

[Herbnerd]

Hi Perry,

I think I may not have been clear. We knew the preservation system was fine - that had been tested using preservative efficacy tests and 3 month accelerated stability to give 9 month shelf-life before the product went on sale. There has been on-going accelerated stability with each batch to ensure we can push this out to 36 months safely.

We were tweaking the vitamin C levels based on the claims to ensure it could be assayed to the claim levels. This is normal practice under TGA (Australia) to conduct on-going stability to ensure compliance.

I cannot comment on the US dietary supplement industry. There are different regulations to be dealt with.

Under Australian Dietary Supplements regulations, they come under the same regs as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and compliance is defined in law.

[Herbnerd]

I had this problem recently with an Aloe Vera juice dietary supplement I developed for a customer. Everything looked fine on the shelf ( quickest way to see if anything goes wrong was to put on a shelf in bright sun… Mould shows up very quickly).
Sent this away for preservative efficacy tests and 3/4 products came back fine. The fourth passed after a tweak to the preservatives.

So, we felt fine to release for sale whilst doing on-going stability.

Under accelerated stability the Vit C disappeared within hours in three of the four product. The fourth was still there but lower than the levels claimed.

The difference between the fourth product and the others was addition of Vitamin E (dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate).

The quickest solution to the problem was to add vitamin E to all products and increase the overage of the vitamin C by 120%. Ie 90 mg/serve claimed input amount was 198 mg/serve.

Admittedly I was working with pharmaceuticals rather than cosmetics, but I am sure there will be a cross-over of information that could be useful. We did consider using Ferulic acid, but we wanted a solution that didn’t require product relisting.