The EWG Healthy Living App can be a valuable resource. But are the readings accurate?
Do you want to learn more about the ingredients in your home and beauty products, but have no idea where to start? Then this EWG Healthy Living App review will be a great resource for you!
It’s an app that rates beauty products, as well as food items. But because Essential Moves to Wellness is a clean beauty site, I’m going to focus more on the beauty product side of the app.
We’re going to go over how the app works, how you can learn about toxic vs. nontoxic ingredients, and how to apply it to your beauty routine. But you must also be careful!
This app shouldn’t be an end-all resource on whether or not you should buy a product. And I’m going to tell you how to use your best judgement down below.
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What is The EWG Healthy Living App?
The EWG Healthy Living app is designed for iPhone or Android, and you can download it for free. Once downloaded, you have access to EWG’s massive database of ingredients and products.
If you’ve never heard of EWG, they are the Environmental Working Group, and they are “a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment.”
I like to think of EWG as an organization that actually has our backs when it comes to telling us what’s in our beauty and personal care products (to a certain degree, more on that later).
Yeah, we have the FDA to monitor our products, but they actually have very little power over what companies put in their products. Not to mention they allow several ingredients that have been proven to be harmful.
EWG gives you a clear view of the ingredients in your products by educating its users with accredited studies. Think of them as a great educational tool that doesn’t have its own secret agenda.
This EWG Healthy Living app review will go deep into the personal care product side of the app, but you can use the same principles for all sections. The app is divided into food, personal care, sunscreen and household cleaner sections.
Why sunscreens get their own section, I don’t know. But I’m no opposed to it, because it’s a pretty problematic category of personal care.
This app is very similar to the Think Dirty app, which also scans and rates products to show you its toxicity. But there are some very big differences that we’ll get into in a bit. If you want to know more, I have a handy Think Dirty review for you to check out.
How Does the EWG Healthy Living App Work?
Each product within EWG’s database has had its ingredients evaluated to some degree, and depending on the toxicity of those ingredients, that product will get a rating to tell you if it’s actually nontoxic and free of any questionable substances.
You can find products within EWG’s database just by using the handy barcode scanner within the app. Or you can use the EWG product search option to look for the product manually if you don’t have it within your grasp.
And you can’t forget their handy browsing section to find new products you’ve never tried before!
I love to browse through EWG’s list of vetted products to find something new to try for you lovely people. Or if you want to manually search for, say, mascara, you’ll get a list of products in order of safest to not safe.
That’s how I discovered W3ll People’s mascara that’s one of my favorites!
In other words, you’ll get shown all of the EWG verified products first then the best products after that, then products you’ll want to stay away from last. It’s less hassle that way.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy any products through EWG Healthy living. This is a major difference between this app and Think Dirty, where you can buy products through affiliate links to keep the app free.
What is an EWG Rating?
The rating of a product by EWG goes on a scale of zero to ten. The Healthy Living app score meaning is very straightforward, which makes shopping much easier!
Zero through three is considered “safe” and given a green color. Four through six is okay and appears orange, and seven to ten is extremely toxic and labeled red.
As you can imagine, you want to use products with as many green ratings as possible. I strive to make sure that every product in my bathroom cabinet has a green rating of three or under.
You can find products on the EWG Healthy living website, or use the convenience of the app. Depending on how I’m feeling and where I’m at on a particular day, I tend to alternate between the app and the website.
You can use the online version of EWG’s personal product database by visiting ewg.org/skindeep. But if you need some extra help researching a product in the store, then I would obviously go with the app.
Is EWG a Reliable Source?
The short answer is yes and no. Yes, it’s a great resource for learning about ingredients in our products that we come into contact with every day.
I love to recommend it to people who are new to clean beauty because it gives a very unbiased perspective on the corruption within the cosmetics industry.
However, there’s not an app for toxic ingredients without its flaws.
Just like in the Think Dirty app, there can be gaps in data. You might notice that the research behind certain ingredients might say limited or fair.
This means that there isn’t enough data to fully determine a product’s toxicity, or there might be just enough.
Another bummer thing about the app is that it doesn’t have every single product out there. EWG is constantly improving and expanding, but they can only keep up with so much.
So if you want to know the rating of a product that just came out, there’s a pretty high chance that you won’t find it in the database.
Lastly, EWG cannot look at how much of each ingredient there is in a product.
That’s too much of a trade secret on the product’s end. This means that it’s possible for an ingredient that’s been deemed toxic in high amounts can flag a product as toxic, even if it’s in a smaller, safer amount.
This is why I still highly recommend that you educate yourself on ingredients to understand how labels work. All it takes is a little bit of time and a whole lot of patience. I have an article all about understanding greenwashing to get you started.
Is EWG Healthy Living or Think Dirty Better?
Ultimately, I think that EWG is a better option than Think Dirty. Their database is much larger, they’re constantly improving and expanding, and I know that their intentions are good.
However, both apps are incredibly similar, with the scanning feature for a database of hundreds of thousands of clean beauty products.
But EWG has a more comprehensive database with constantly changing research to keep up with the changing industry.
However, if you’re willing to pay a few dollars a month, the paid version of Think Dirty might be a good fit for you!
Think Dirty recently added a paywall to a few of the features on their app, which includes more enhanced search capabilities, as well as access to a bigger database with products that have been submitted by customers.
Of course, you’ll have to use your own discretion, but there’s much more helpful information on Think Dirty if you’re willing to pay. I, for one, absolutely hate subscriptions so I try to avoid them as much as possible. Just something to think about.
Before You Go!
EWG certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s a great resource for you to get started with learning to read ingredient lists and understanding what certain things can do to our bodies. Once you fully realize the depth of your toxic load, your outlook on your beauty products will change completely.
I’ve had a completely nontoxic beauty routine since 2012, and I’ve never felt better! I know that it seems pretty far-fetched that all these toxic ingredients have an effect on us, but when you go back for whatever reason, you can feel a difference.
And if you’re just starting out, I want to make your transition easier than mine ever was! My ebook Essential Moves to Clean Beauty is the resource I wish I had when I detoxed my bathroom cabinet.
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