Forum: Complete ingredients list needed on health and beauty products
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In recent years, while shopping for health and beauty supplements in retail pharmacies and minimarts, I have noticed a rather troubling trend.
While the majority of brands responsibly provide a full ingredients list in English on their products’ packaging, there appear to be a number that do not. Ranging from collagen powder to vitamins and fruit juices, these brands simply give a perfunctory summary of “active ingredients” or “main ingredients”. In some instances, there is no English translation of the ingredients at all.
This is frustrating, as it leaves discerning customers who do care about what exactly goes into what they eat to search online for the list. This is all well and good if it can be found (in some cases, scanning a QR code provided solves the issue) but sometimes, even the brand’s official website does not provide further enlightenment.
Instead, one is bombarded with snazzy pictures, glowing testimonies, effusive blurbs and assurances of “purity”, “convenience” and “efficacy” while a comprehensive ingredients list is ironically not transparently offered. In some cases, the information is given, but in the foreign language of the supplement’s country of origin.
I, like many, still buy from retail outlets as items on the shelves are subjected to monitoring and regulation, and we rightly expect that there will be clarity in a language we understand. This is in contrast to shopping online on various popular apps, where the bulk of sellers who are foreign are seemingly not obligated to state a complete ingredients list in their item description box. This is another issue which should be addressed.
Today, as more people struggle with food and/or drug intolerance, sensitivity and allergies, access to a clear, accurate and most vitally, exhaustive list of ingredients, is a necessity.
Surely, there is enough space on the six surfaces of a rectangular package for accountable declaration and not just effervescent persuasion. I hope the relevant authorities can look into this.
Huang Kangrui
