Are Our Lip Balms Scented or Flavored?

There has been a lot of debate in the comments about whether our lip balms truly are flavored, or whether they are scented, and I wanted to clarify this for you because, well, it can be a little confusing!

When you’re creating beauty products, there are many different types of ingredients you can use and they are all classified differently. There are some ingredients that are considered fragrance and would impart no taste on a product at all, but we don't use those. We want to make sure that we use ingredients that are safe to be applied to the lips and that would be non-toxic if ingested. So, the ingredients that we use to give our products their smell are in fact called “flavors” and we list them as “aroma” on our labels, which is what is required by Health Canada and the FDA. So, yes, while our products do not really have a taste, they still technically have a flavor and not a scent even though they smell good and don't really taste like much. Make sense? I know, it's weird, and it's one of those technical things about cosmetic formulation.

Okay, so now that we know that they are in fact flavors, why the heck don't they actually taste like what says on the label.? We are in fact just one ingredient away from getting our lip balms to taste just like the flavor they are called. And that is a sweetener.  It's also why a lot of people have been saying that they've had lip balms that taste the way they smell because many manufacturers do add a sweetener. But we've decided not to. Our lip balms only going to help moisturize your lips if it stays on your lips. And if it tastes sweet we know a lot of you will lick it off - we've seen that in the comments. And the saliva will also contribute to drying out your lips, so we've decided to omit any sweetners.

We do have one type of product that's sweetened though, and that's our exfoliating lip balm because the exfoliant is - you guessed it - sugar! It tastes delicious but because it's a treatment that people won't apply as often as a regular lip balm, we're not too worried about people drying out their lips with the licking.

As for why you can't eat it, the answer is simple. Lip balm is not food. While our lip balms aren't toxic, we use cosmetic-grade ingredients that aren't meant for consumption. So while it's fine to have it on your lips and in a tiny amount just because it's in such close proximity to your mouth, it's not meant to be a snack. Think of all the things you used to use as a kid that had the words non-toxic on them. Crayons. Glue. They were formulated in such a way so that they wouldn't harm anyone if they did get eaten, but I'm pretty sure no one ever packed a glue stick into your bag as a snack.