Luxe natural line True Botanicals is beloved among green beauties and high-end skincare aficionados alike. Their products boast an impressive quantity of high-performing natural ingredients, and the brand’s customer service (they work directly with shoppers to help them find the best products for their needs) makes True Botanicals a leader in green beauty.
It’s no surprise then that savvy glam gal Olivia Wilde is a huge fan of the line, describing True Botanicals as “The skincare I wish I had in my 20s. Man oh MAN if only I had known better. It is NOT fair how much BS is sold to young people. The industry sells them crap that’s full of toxins and lacks the actual nutrients your young skin needs… basically junk food for your skin. Waste of money AND only leads you to buy more crap to fix the crap caused by the original crap…” Preach, Olivia! “Try it. Or don’t. Do what you feel. But lend me a time machine so I can go back and use it on young me.”
As if having a range of cult products and an endorsement from Olivia Wilde weren’t enough, True Botanicals recently made an ingredient breakthrough, managing to harness the skin-benefitting powers of a common food scrap—the apple peel.
Of course, we’ve probably all heard that consuming the apple peel (on organic apples) has major health benefits. Roughly 75% of the fiber in apple peels come from pectin (and apples have the highest concentration of pectin in the produce kingdom). This fiber does an impressive job of boosting digestive efficiency, lowering cholesterol, and possibly even preventing DNA damage. The antioxidants and phytochemicals (especially quercetin) in apple peels helps prevent damage to individual cells and the capillaries responsible for delivering nutrients to the body.
Now we’re learning that apple peels may have potent benefits when applied topically.
“We were able to turn wasted apple peels into value-added products,” says Rui Hai Liu, MD, Ph.D., a professor at Cornell’s department of food science. Dr. Liu believes this innovative yet completely natural addition will be a skin care game-changer, capable of stimulating collagen production and making a notable difference in the quality of skin. True Botanicals explains that Cornell has patented the processed used to retain the bioactivity of the peel at almost 100%.
The theory behind apple peel’s effectiveness has something to do with the fruit’s natural longevity. Apples are one of nature’s longest lasting fruits, and their components have value for people, too. Quercetin alone has been shown to extend the life of human cells.
Although quercetin and other apple extracts have been featured in skin care products before, True Botanicals posits that using whole apple peel as an ingredient will maximize all of the topical skin care benefits apples have to offer.
Designed to benefit all skin types, True Botanicals apple-packed Antioxidant Booster checks off a number of skin care priorities, including: preventing environmental skin damage, smoothing skin, firming skin, fighting acne, fading hyperpigmentation and scarring, reducing redness, calming inflammation, and boosting youthfulness.
The booster contains whole apple peel as its first ingredient as well as resveratrol (a potent antioxidant found in grape skin) and additional quercetin. By combining a few drops of your favorite face serum with two shakes of the booster, you can create a customized facial serum. Alternatively, the booster can be mixed with a bit of water to form a serum on its own.
While I’m quite fascinated by the apple peel concept, I’m especially curious about the booster’s ability to mix with any serum and retain its potency. For example, are there certain other active ingredients (like enzymes, AHAs, vitamin C, retinol, etc.) that could somehow destabilize or oxidize the Antioxidant Booster? Or vice versa? For this reason, I’d probably be most comfortable using the serum alone with water. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see more innovative skin care products featuring apple peel!
What do you think? Would you try True Botanicals Antioxidant Booster?
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Photo: Olivia Wilde via Instagram, True Botanicals
