Many 'natural' personal care product manufacturers go to great lengths trying to indicate to you the goodness of the ingredients they use. A common practice is to use the terms 'vegetable,' 'vegetable-derived' or 'vegetable-based' to describe the ingredient. But what does this really mean to you?
At best, 'vegetable' means that the ingredient they are using comes from a renewable resource instead of petroleum. This is good for the planet, but in terms of healthiness, it's likely to be quite meaningless. For example, Tom's of Maine, now a Colgate subsidiary, was originally founded to produce wholesome toothpaste, free of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Today, they justify the use of SLS because it comes from a 'coconut oil' source. The problem is, SLS is SLS. No matter where it comes from it's still a harsh industrial detergent, irrespective of concentration. The same is true for any 'vegetable' sourced ingredient that is identical in composition to its petrochemical counterpart.
'Vegetable' actually means very little in regard to health when present in ingredient lists and you, as a consumer, should not interpret it as good for you simply because the original carbon atoms were organized by a plant. It can easily be argued that petroleum oil (and ostensibly all derivatives thereof) is 'vegetable derived,' since it was once indeed an ancient forest that was buried in the earth's crust many million years ago. The fact is, humanity's ingenious chemical processes can make just about any petrochemical from peanut oil - (bio)diesel is an example. An ingredient may have been a plant once, but what is it now?
So, what should you do as a label reader when you see 'vegetable' in the ingredient list? Don't be fooled. Such an ingredient is greener for the environment in terms of sustainabilty, but its not likely to be any better for your health than its petroleum-derived analog.
