Why I Trust the Brand That Walked Away
On hydroxyapatite, integrity, and what trust actually looks like in clean beauty.
Within the first 5 minutes of talking to Jenn, I knew we were aligned. I immediately saw a strong mother determined to make a difference out of her family's trauma and pain. When I first came across ZEBRA, the transparency and commitment to quality was instantly recognizable, which is the very first thing I look for when choosing safe products.
For over a decade now, I have researched cosmetic ingredients and sought safer options. Simply put, there is nothing preventing companies from using toxic ingredients in our everyday products, and it's up to brands to choose to do the right thing, and hopefully the consumer finds them. I realized this when I was pregnant with my twins in 2014 and trying to find pregnancy and baby-safe products. I remember reading articles warning about the dangers of talc, yet still finding that exact ingredient in the most popular baby powders. I knew then that I needed to somehow disseminate this information to others, but I wasn't sure how.
In 2019, Switch Natural became the permanent home for my ingredient research and product recommendations. Out of an immediate need in my community, I built my app, which scans products and alerts users of risky ingredients while providing descriptions of those ingredients and direct links to relevant research. It was essential that consumers fully understand what these ingredients are and why they should be avoided.
The second most pressing question in my community was: what should I buy instead. So I built a shop within the app where users can search and shop through all clean products. I tell people all the time it's extremely rare to find a brand for which all products are clean, and I encourage them to scan every product from a brand before purchasing even if you know another of theirs is clean.
ZEBRA is that rare brand. Every single product is truly clean, and that is something to be proud of.
When Jenn reached out, she told me how much she loved and trusted my app, and she also told me other apps were giving her products poor ratings due to things like trace heavy metals. This is where I feel for the consumer trying to do the right thing only to get blindsided by a supposed trusted source telling them that clean products are dangerous. We must be judicious and thoughtful about who we trust.
Because ZEBRA uses high quality and natural ingredients, there will always be trace amounts of heavy metals, similar to vegetables like spinach and beets that grow in the earth. ZEBRA tests for heavy metals and ensures they are as low as possible and well within legal limits. Jenn even mentioned how those apps are wrongfully branding a competitor of hers as toxic. This is a brand with values and ethics, exactly the type I want to support and surround myself with.
Just a few weeks ago, we met in person and had the opportunity to hash out a big topic in wellness: hydroxyapatite.
I've long been cautious of nano hydroxyapatite because nano particles in general are known to be risky in the body. I've warned people for years against using sunscreens with nano particles, where they are commonly found, and against black pigment in makeup. Oral care is no exception, though the wellness marketing machine would rather have you believe otherwise.
But the deeper I look at this ingredient, the more concerned I become with the category as a whole. Micro hydroxyapatite is marketed as the safer alternative, but I have yet to see evidence that it delivers on what it promises. Unbiased, independent research on hydroxyapatite, at any particle size, is hard to find. When that's the state of the evidence, the most rigorous answer is not to choose between nano and micro. It's to ask whether the ingredient belongs in the formula at all.
That is exactly the question Jenn asked. After spending nearly a year formulating a hydroxyapatite toothpaste and watching the wellness affiliate ecosystem celebrate it, she walked away. ZEBRA's toothpaste does not contain hydroxyapatite. Her conclusion and mine had arrived at the same place independently, from different sides of the industry.
This is what trust looks like to me. A founder willing to walk away from a year of work, a finished product, and an entire trend, because the underlying science isn't there yet.
A brand whose answer to "is this ingredient safe" is to refuse to use it until that question has a defensible answer. That is rare. And it's the reason I feel completely comfortable recommending ZEBRA to my community.
