The skin care and anti aging and cosmetics industry is a huge industry, worth, by some estimates, around $50 billion. And there are many many companies making skin care products, including so called natural skin care products, as well as cosmetics, beauty products, hair, and body care products, and more. Hair colorings, hair removal, anti aging products, body oils, dry skin treatments, oily skin treatments and so on and so on.

When there are so many products available to you to satisfy every need you could ever have to purchase a product to pamper every part of your body, why would you want to bother searching out "natural" products, including natural skin care products.

First let me say there is no formal definition of "natural" skin care products. However it's quite possible to compare the different types of skin care and anti aging products by looking at what's available to you on the market.

First there is, of course, the big brand name products. I'm sure you know the ones I mean. Saturation TV advertising, their skin care products seen on the shelves of just about every department store.

Would it surprise you to know that many of these big brand name products, probably most, are not considered to be effective, and have ingredients which are often suspect or even downright dangerous?

Yes it's true, the skin care industry isn't effectively regulated, and they can put just about anything they want into their products. The FDA doesn't require these products to be tested for safety or efficacy.

Here's just one example, but there are many. Recent tests showed lead in over 50% of big brand name lipsticks tested, to the point where the State of California, at least, has banned lead in lipsticks.

There's many other examples of suspect or dangerous ingredients in our body care, hair care, skin care and nail care products and just about all of our beauty and personal use products like simple shampoos and toothpastes.

On the other hand there are companies, one in particular, that make extremely effective and safe natural skin care products.

By "natural" this means naturally occurring ingredients which are known to be safe for human use.

Here's some examples.

Shea butter, extracted from the seed of a tree. An extremely effective natural moisturizer.

Jojoba oil from the nut of the Jojoba plant, very high in natural anti oxidants that are very good for natural skin health.

Grape seed oil, extracted from the seeds of various grape varieties, high in natural fatty acids and anti oxidants and also an excellent natural skin moisturizer.

And more, there's many many naturally occurring substances that aren't made in a lab, and are extremely effective when added to a natural skin care range of products.

However it's not sufficient for a company to use naturally occurring ingredients in it's skin care and anti aging products. To be truly "natural" the company needs to have a commitment to producing and using these ingredients safely. Because it's quite possible to change the makeup of an ingredient in the process used to extract it, particularly by the use of heat. And this can make a useful naturally occurring ingredient quite useless.

An example is keratin, a naturally occurring part of skin hair and nails. Keratin is used by the big brand name companies, however it is extracted from the horns and hooves of animals by heat, thereby changing it's makeup to a less useful form.

The best manufacturer of natural skin care products has a commitment to using only naturally occurring ingredients that are both safe for human use and also effective. In fact their brief is to produce the worlds best natural skin care products that are safe enough to eat.

So despite the fact that there is no formal definition of natural skin care products, an examination of both the ingredients used in skin care products combined with an examination of the company's philosophy about the production of it's products will establish quite clearly what the best "natural skin care products" are.