Companies Convinced You These Products Are Healthy, But Are They?

Most people will spend 20 minutes reading the back of a cracker box but have never once flipped over the shampoo bottle sitting in their shower.

That gap between how we treat food and how we treat everyday personal care products is what I want to dig into in this episode. Shampoo, body wash, lotion, deodorant, laundry detergent. These are products most of us use every single day for years without ever asking what's actually in them or why.

I walk through the lens I use whenever I'm standing in a store deciding whether to bring a product home. It's not fear, and it's not paranoia about every ingredient. It's a simple question: why is this here, and does it serve a real purpose?

Sweat as a detox pathway, the aluminum question, the fabric softener that gave me a mystery rash, the matrix moment in the laundry aisle. All of it ties together.

If you've ever felt sick walking past the detergent shelf, you'll understand why by the end.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[1:36] Why do we scrutinize food labels but blindly trust what we put on our skin?

[5:15] The lens to use when standing in a store deciding what comes home

[6:53] Shampoo is engineered for the sensory experience, not actually cleansing your hair

[8:44] Hair as an antenna, Samson, and the conspiracy behind widespread balding

[11:10] That tight squeegee feeling after a shower means the product is harming you

[15:15] The deodorant rabbit hole, lymphatic detox, and the breast cancer connection

[18:18] The mystery skin reaction that exposed fabric softener as a hidden culprit

[19:47] Why a shirt should never smell like perfume two weeks after washing

[27:21] The Cypher problem: why some homesteaders choose to be plugged back into the matrix

Related Gubba Homestead Episodes:

5 Things Women Aren't Told About Healthcare Products & Screenings

Resources Mentioned:

Summer Blend Tallow Balm - Limited Edition

Hello, and welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. I’m Gubba, a first-time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. I discuss everything from homesteading to prepping and everything in between.

Today's episode is going to take us somewhere a little different. Because there are certain things we interact with every single day that have become so normal, so routine, that most of us never stop to question them. We buy them, use them, replace them, and move on. Shampoo. Body wash. Lotion. Deodorant. Laundry detergent. They're simply part of everyday life.

But over the last several years, I've found myself becoming increasingly curious about a question that most people never seem to ask. Why have we become so careful about what we put into our bodies while remaining almost completely unaware of what we're putting on them?

We read food labels now. We question artificial dyes. We avoid ultra-processed foods. We care where our meat comes from and how our vegetables are grown. Yet many of the same people who spend twenty minutes reading the ingredient list on a box of crackers have never once turned over the bottle of shampoo sitting in their shower.

We've been taught to scrutinize our food, but somehow we've been conditioned to trust the products we use on our skin every single day without asking many questions at all.

And when you start looking closer, a bigger pattern begins to emerge. The modern personal care industry isn't really built around simplicity. It's built around creating an experience. Stronger scents. More foam. More products. More steps. More promises. Entire aisles filled with products designed to make us smell better, feel cleaner, look younger, and convince us that the solution to every problem is another bottle, another cream, another treatment, or another ingredient.

The question isn't whether every ingredient is dangerous. The question is how we arrived at a place where most people couldn't tell you what's in the products they use every day, why those ingredients are there, or whether all of them are even necessary in the first place. Because once you start asking those questions, you begin looking at that bathroom shelf very differently.

Before we get into today's topic, I want to thank the sponsor of this podcast, which is my small skincare business, Arvoti. I just launched my special limited edition Summer Blend Tallow balm and it's unlike any balm I have made before. Crafted with dandelion from my homestead and smooth luxurious finish, it will leave your skin glowing like the summer sun. Give it a try today before it's gone. Let's dive in. 

Before we start walking through these different product categories, I want to share the lens I use whenever I'm standing in a store looking at something I might bring into my home. I don't look at products from a place of fear, and I don't assume every ingredient is dangerous. What I do try to do is ask questions.

Why is this ingredient here? What purpose does it serve? Is it helping the product perform its intended function, or is it simply improving the marketing, the scent, the texture, or the experience? 

That simple shift in perspective has completely changed the way I shop, and by the end of this episode, my goal is that you'll feel more confident evaluating products for yourself rather than relying entirely on whatever promises happen to be printed on the front label.

The first place I want to start is the shower, because that's where most of us begin our day. We reach for the same bottle of shampoo we've been using for months, sometimes years, and we rarely give it much thought.

Most people choose a shampoo based on scent, marketing claims, recommendations from friends, or simply because they like how their hair feels afterward. But when you start looking at ingredient labels, you realize that many shampoos are designed as much around the experience as they are around the actual function.

One of the things you'll notice immediately is how heavily fragranced many shampoos have become. It's not enough for your hair to be clean anymore. It needs to smell like coconut, tropical fruit, vanilla, eucalyptus, flowers, or whatever scent profile happens to be popular at the moment.

The fragrance becomes part of the selling point. Then there are ingredients designed to create rich lather and thick foam because we've been conditioned to associate bubbles with cleanliness. 

The challenge is that some people spend years dealing with dry scalps, irritation, itching, and sensitivity without ever considering whether the product they're washing their scalp with every day might be contributing to the problem.

Read the ingredients on what you are putting on your head.

Body wash follows a very similar pattern. In fact, when you strip away the marketing and packaging, many body washes are built around the same philosophy as shampoo. Strong fragrance. Rich foam. Bright colors. A sensory experience designed to make consumers feel like they're getting a deep clean.

But one thing I've noticed over the years is how many people assume it's normal for their skin to feel tight after a shower.

We've almost been trained to think that stripped feeling means the product worked. Yet healthy skin has a barrier for a reason. Your skin isn't designed to be completely stripped of every natural oil every single day. Those oils serve a purpose. They help retain moisture and support the skin's natural defenses.

When people tell me their skin feels dry, itchy, or irritated all the time, one of the first things I wonder about is their moisturizer and also their cleanser. Because if you're removing moisture faster than your skin can replace it, you'll always find yourself chasing the next product that's supposed to fix the problem.

Then we move to lotion, and I think this category is especially interesting because it often reveals how disconnected we've become from ingredient transparency. Most people buy lotion because they want softer skin.

That's a perfectly reasonable goal. But if you pick up ten lotions from a store shelf, you'll often find long ingredient lists filled with compounds the average consumer has never heard of. Again, skincare should be simple. That's why I make what I do at Arvoti. All natural, simple skincare.

Deodorant is another category that deserves far more attention than it receives. Think about it for a moment. Most people apply deodorant every single day for decades. It's one of the most consistently used products in the average household.

Yet very few consumers have ever spent time researching what's in it. They choose based on scent, branding, or whether it prevents odor effectively. That's understandable, but it also highlights the larger pattern we've been talking about throughout this episode.

Many deodorants rely heavily on fragrance. Some contain ingredients specifically designed to block sweat, while others focus primarily on masking odor. Regardless of which type someone prefers, I think the bigger takeaway is simply awareness.

If a product is something you're using every day, it's worth knowing what's inside it. It's worth paying attention to how your skin responds. It's worth asking whether every ingredient serves a meaningful purpose or whether some exist primarily because they've become industry standards that nobody questions anymore.

And then we arrive at what I believe may be the most overlooked category of all: laundry detergent.

This is the category that completely changed the way I thought about personal care products because it forced me to recognize how much time we spend in contact with fabrics. We wear clothes all day.

We sleep on sheets every night. We wrap babies in blankets. We dry off with towels. When you really stop and think about it, the products we use in our laundry room may influence our daily environment just as much as the products we use in the bathroom.

Yet if you look at the marketing surrounding laundry products, you'll notice the same pattern appearing again. Stronger scents. Longer-lasting fragrances. Scent boosters. Fabric softeners. Dryer sheets. Products designed to make fabrics smell increasingly powerful for increasingly long periods of time.

At some point I found myself asking a simple question: Why? Why does a shirt need to smell like perfume two weeks after it was washed? Why do our sheets need to smell like tropical flowers? Why have we become so focused on scent that fragrance itself has become the primary selling point?

What makes this especially important is that many people struggling with skin irritation, headaches, respiratory sensitivities, or unexplained discomfort never think to evaluate their laundry products. They evaluate their food. They evaluate their skincare. They evaluate their supplements. But they continue washing every piece of fabric in heavily fragranced products because it never occurs to them that those products might be worth questioning too.

The deeper lesson in all of this isn't that shampoo is bad or lotion is bad or deodorant is bad or detergent is bad. The lesson is that we've become accustomed to accepting products without asking questions. We've outsourced our curiosity. We've assumed someone else has already done the thinking for us.

And maybe that's the biggest thing homesteading has taught me. Whether we're talking about food, gardening, healthcare, or skincare, some of the most important discoveries begin with a simple willingness to ask why.

I think one of the reasons this topic matters so much is because it reveals how easily we adapt to whatever environment we find ourselves in. Human beings are incredibly good at normalizing things.

If you grow up surrounded by heavily fragranced products, you stop noticing them. If every detergent you've ever used leaves behind a strong scent, that becomes your definition of clean. If every shampoo you've ever purchased foams aggressively, you begin associating foam with effectiveness. The longer something remains part of your daily life, the less likely you are to question it.

That's why I don't think this conversation is really about shampoo, lotion, deodorant, or detergent. Those products simply happen to be examples of a much larger pattern. The pattern is that modern consumers are constantly being told what they need without being encouraged to ask why they need it.

Every year there are new products, new trends, new ingredients, and new promises. Entire industries depend on convincing people that what they already have isn't enough. Your current routine isn't enough. Your current products aren't enough. Your current results aren't enough. The solution is always one more purchase away.

When you step back and look at it objectively, it's a remarkable business model. Convince people they have a problem, then sell them the solution. If the solution doesn't work, convince them they need another solution.

If that doesn't work, convince them they need a more advanced version of the first solution. Before long, consumers find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of buying products without ever stopping to evaluate whether the original premise was true in the first place.

I see this happen constantly with skincare. Someone develops dry skin, so they buy a moisturizer. Then they buy a serum to improve the moisturizer. Then they buy an exfoliant to improve the serum.

Then they buy another product to calm irritation caused by the exfoliant. Then they buy a specialized treatment to address a new issue that appeared somewhere along the way. Before long, they have a cabinet full of products and no clear understanding of what's helping and what's making things worse.

That word keeps coming up for me because it's become one of the most important lessons I've learned through homesteading. Simplicity isn't exciting. It doesn't generate headlines. It doesn't create billion-dollar industries.

Nobody becomes wealthy by convincing people they need less. Yet over and over again, I've found myself returning to simpler approaches because they make it easier to understand what's actually happening. When you strip away unnecessary complexity, patterns become easier to see. Cause and effect become easier to identify. You spend less time chasing solutions and more time understanding the problem.

That's why I keep coming back to awareness. Not because awareness is trendy, but because awareness creates freedom. The moment you start paying attention, you become less dependent on marketing. You become less dependent on trends. You become less dependent on somebody else telling you what you need. Instead of automatically accepting claims, you begin evaluating them. Instead of buying products out of habit, you start asking questions.

The questions themselves are actually pretty simple. Why am I using this product in the first place? What purpose does it serve in my daily life? If I removed the branding, the advertising, and all the promises on the front label, would I still believe this product is necessary?

Those aren't questions most people ask while shopping, but they have a way of changing how you evaluate what comes into your home. Once you start thinking that way, you're no longer simply buying products because you've always bought them. You're making a conscious decision based on what you actually value.

What I hope people take away from this episode is not a list of ingredients to memorize or products to avoid. The internet already has plenty of those. What I hope people take away is a willingness to look at everyday products with a little more curiosity. So many of the things we accept as normal were simply handed to us by advertising, habit, and convenience.

The products in our shower, the detergent in our laundry room, and the routines we follow every day often go unquestioned for years. Yet some of the most meaningful changes I've made in my own life started when I stopped accepting things at face value and began asking whether they actually made sense.

Most of the time, the answers aren't as dramatic as people expect. Sometimes you discover that a product is perfectly fine. Other times you find a simpler alternative or realize you've been spending money on something you never really needed. Either way, you become more intentional about the choices you're making.

To me, that's what this journey is really about. Not fear or perfection. Not obsessing over every ingredient or every label. It's about becoming an active participant in your own life instead of a passive consumer moving from one product to the next without ever asking questions.

Being in tune with yourself and surroundings is built on small decisions repeated consistently over time. Paying attention to what comes into your home, understanding why you're using something, and choosing simplicity when simplicity makes sense may not feel dramatic in the moment, but over the course of years those choices shape how you think, how you shop, and ultimately how you live.

Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of the Gubba Homestead Podcast. If this conversation got you thinking, I encourage you to take a look around your own home. Not with fear, but with curiosity. Pick up a product you've used for years. Read the label. Ask why it's there. You might be surprised by what you discover.

Until next time, keep asking questions, keep learning, and keep taking small steps toward a healthier and more intentional life.