Gluten-Free Makeup
Reading Time: 4 minutes Red Apple Lipstick is the first makeup line to independently lab test each makeup formula for Gluten Free certification in the United States.
Red Apple Lipstick, Inc was founded in 2007 in Houston Texas with the express purpose of manufacturing and distributing color cosmetics and makeup for women with allergies.
All Red Apple Lipstick makeup and color cosmetics are allergen friendly, completely gluten free, paraben free, soy free, cruelty free, and enhances your natural beauty as a quality product. Our products’ ingredients list is short and vegan, so you know exactly what you are putting on your face, and that it’s good for you, rather than filled with toxic chemicals or allergens, like gluten.
This is just one part of our goal to promote healthy and sustainable living through choosing raw ingredients and creating final products that set the standard for clean beauty for sensitive skin.
Why do we make all our cosmetics gluten free?
Whether or not gluten can be absorbed by the skin is debated by many, but you can certainly ingest it through your mouth. To be clear, Red Apple Lipstick is in the “Your Skin is a carrier, not a barrier” camp. This means lipsticks, eye liners, lip liners, lip balms and lip glosses are important to watch out for if you have Celiac disease or other autoimmune diseases. But, it’s also important to think about the other makeup you put on your face. How are you removing it? When the cool water rushes from the faucet, into your hands, and down your face to wash the day away, I’m betting some of it passes your lips. Right there, that’s ingestion.
Many Americans with Celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity feel better when their makeup is gluten free. Certification organizations exist for the certification of food productions lines, such as the Gluten-Free Certification Organization (GFCO), which requires products to meet stringent standards of less than 10 parts per million (ppm) of gluten, but our numbers are even lower than that. Because we make ALL our products in a 100% gluten free facility and use local sources for our naturally-gluten free raw ingredients, we guarantee no cross-contamination with our makeup–we are completely safe for the gluten free community.
How do you know the entire Red Apple makeup brand is Gluten Free?
Our company uses BIA Diagnostics, leaders in Allergen Analysis, to test each formula. We evaluate and validate the facility, the process, the ingredients themselves, and the final cosmetic product to make sure you are getting the safest product to wear.
What are grains doing in most other beauty products anyway?
Most makeup companies use wheat as a binder in their products, but gluten can be found in malt, barley, rye, and oats as well. Often times, cosmetic companies will hide these binders in hard-to-decipher chemical names. Binders in cosmetics are generally “combined” or “processed” ingredients that once produced are labeled as a single ingredient.
Binders help the ingredients stick together, just like eggs in a cake. Instead, Red Apple Lipstick uses all Candelilla wax to keep you our products bound together. Another sneaky source of gluten is Vitamin E or tocopherol acetate which can often times be derived from gluten or soy, ours is derived from Sunflower seeds.
Why is it necessary to avoid gluten-laced makeup?
Women ingest somewhere around a pound of lipstick over their lifetimes, so what we are consuming in our cosmetic products really do matter! Many lipsticks, glosses and balms are laced with gluten as an unnecessary binder material, along with other wheat based ingredients that could negatively affect the health or stability of a person suffering with Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, especially when ingested.
Melinda Dennis MS, RDN, LDN, a found er and senior Nutrition Consultant for the NCA (National Celiac Organization), and writer of Delete The Wheat Blog, and as a Dietitian for BIDMC of Boston Celiac Team writes:
it is my clinical experience that several patients with celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis have reported reactions to what appears to be topical exposure to gluten (or air-borne in the case of hair spray) in body care products and that this reaction resolved once they stopped using the gluten-containing product. … I support my patients who follow a gluten-free diet in selecting cosmetics free of gluten, in particular lip products and hair and face lotion, should they choose to do so.
https://nationalceliac.org/celiac-disease-questions/using-gluten-free-skin-body-products-someone-celiac-disease/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melinda-dennis-ms-rd-ldn-5006ba9/
Our balms, liners, exfoliators, lipsticks and even eyeshadows and Mascara are 100% gluten free, so you know what you are consuming through your mouth is safe. But even if you aren’t a victim of Celiac disease, RedApple Lipstick is a wonderful line of cosmetics that is gluten free, clean, beautiful, colorful, vegan, cruelty free, performs better than expected, and good for your body: why not make the switch to makeup you can trust?
The Bottom Line
Staying gluten free, cruelty free, paraben free, vegan, and allergen friendly in our ingredients is important for more than just those with Autoimmune diseases like Celiac disease, Sjogren’s syndrome, Breast cancer, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Lupus or Type 1 Diabetes and those that suffer from dermatitis herpetiformis, and non-celiac wheat allergies; it’s important for everyone because it is the cleanest, most ethical choice to put on your skin. Red Apple Lipstick strives to provide a clean, healthy choice to those who would enhance their natural beauty with safe, beautiful cosmetics.
