When “Free From” Claims Raise More Questions Than Answers 

More than ever, consumers are interested in clean beauty—cosmetics, skincare, and hair products formulated without ingredients perceived as harmful, harsh, or otherwise undesirable.  As consumers become more educated about the ingredients used in traditional beauty products, including those they may wish to avoid, manufacturers have responded to this growing demand by marketing products as “natural,” “clean,” or otherwise better for consumers.  

Increasingly, manufacturers have gone a step further by marketing products as “free from” certain ingredients that have become disfavored among consumers.  It is now common to see labels such as “paraben free” or “sulfate free” on bottles of shampoo and other personal care products.  But what do these claims really mean in practice?  

What may surprise some consumers is that even when a “free from” claim is literally true, the product may still contain alternative ingredients that serve a similar function.  In some instances, manufacturers replace a familiar ingredient that has become disfavored among consumers with a lesser-known alternative and then market the product on the basis of the absence of the original ingredient.  As a result, a product may be free of the specific ingredient highlighted on the label while still containing an alternative ingredient that consumers, if aware of it, may view as comparable in practice. 

This raises an important question: what do consumers reasonably understand a “free from” claim to mean?  Does a “paraben free” or “sulfate free” label simply communicate the absence of a particular ingredient, or does it also suggest that the product avoids the concerns associated with that ingredient?  

This question lies at the heart of consumer protection law, which is concerned not only with what a label literally says, but also with what consumers reasonably understand it to mean.  As “free from” marketing continues to grow in popularity, that distinction is likely to remain an important issue for consumers and manufacturers alike.