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Food for skin
Stefano Togni, Business Development and Head of Personal Care, Indena S.p.A., looks at how edible plants could become a source of innovative cosmetic ingredients
Nowadays everybody knows that the skin is a living organ, constantly renewed and responsible for protection, transmission and exchanges between the inner and outer environment. This fact is now widely accepted and an increasing attention is paid to the profile of the ingredients and formulations that we lay on our skin. In addition to the efficacy, the safety of any given product has become of paramount importance; the cosmetic industry has banned several substances with uncertain tolerability in recent years, and is now more and more appreciating short and clean INCI names, like the ones granted by dry standardised extracts. To satisfy the trends of the modern cosmetic science, it is important to propose ingredients that are safe and environmentally friendly as well as fully characterised and effective. This is possible only when we consider and manage the cosmetic ingredients as active principles. In order to carry out reliable safety and efficacy trials one must necessarily have an excellent standardisation and batch to batch consistency of the active ingredients. This is the reason why the producers of natural cosmetic ingredients have to take care of the
“Edible plants
represent a unique opportunity to create novel
ingredients thanks to their excellent safety profile
botanical supply, the extraction process, the standardisation and the stability throughout the shelf life of the ingredients. Typically, the development of a new active cosmetic ingredient, responding to these standards, implies complex work where several different competencies are involved: the agronomical department, the process development labs, the marketing as well as the scientific departments taking care of the safety and efficacy test. Edible plants represent a unique opportunity to create novel ingredients thanks to their excellent safety
“
profile given by their use as food sources since forever. Also the sustainability of plants that are traditionally used as a food in a given country is typically excellent: these botanical species have always been part of their own environment or, at least, have become fully integrated in the ecosystem throughout the centuries and used by traditional cultivation methods. Finally, the strong bonds between a territory and a specific plant variety make it possible to select and create ingredients that are unique, both in terms of the molecular profile and marketing appeal. This is the case of; the Coratina variety of olive fruits (Olea europaea (L.)), cultivated in Apulia – Italy; of wild bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus L.), harvested by hand in the North European forests, where they spontaneously grow undisturbed; and of grapes from the Champagne region in France. Using the olive fruit and a food grade process, it was possible to create a standardised extract enriched in verbascoside, a unique polyphenol endowed with very strong
antioxidant properties. From the minute wild bilberry seeds, through a clean hypercritical CO2
process, an
oily extract was produced with a balanced ratio between omega 3 and omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Lastly, from wine producing areas, different varieties of grape seeds are collected and wisely blended to obtain a fully characterised and reproducible extract enriched in proanthocyanidins, whose analytical fingerprint is uniquely defined. These are just few examples of how a convergence between food and cosmetic science is possible. Last but not least, these kind of ingredients are suitable both for topical application and for oral route administration, allowing the creation of skincare and nutricosmetic products, following the growing trend of “beauty from within”. Skin needs to be correctly nourished: what is better than a cosmetic ingredient coming from real food to do it?
INDENA S.p.A., Stand Q39
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