Sweet almond oil is a viscous oil with a yellowy colour. Cosmetic scientists like it because it gives a rich lubricious feel to cream formulations. Marketers like it because it sounds natural. More on that in a minute. It contains a lot of unsaturated fatty chains. This is something that might turn out to have some benefits for the skin, though there is no formal evidence I can cite to justify this at present. The skin contains some chemicals that look a lot like the unsaturated bits of sweet almond oil and which seem to help protect the skin against bacteria. It isn’t impossible that adding sweet almond to the skin boosts this sort of thing and so helps build the skin’s barrier and protective function. Continue reading
I think I can claim to be something of an expert about skincare, but the trouble with getting really immersed in a subject is that you begin to forget that not everybody knows what you know. I spend a lot of time talking to people in the beauty industry who know a great deal about cosmetic products. And when I am not talking to them I am often talking to beauty bloggers who know even more. So when I gave a talk the other day to some people with no particular connection to the business I was struck that the questions they asked were ones that I would have thought everybody already knew the answer to. Here’s one interesting one. 
