Lack of Information Meets Scare Tactics - Arbonne products/trade review Part 1.

I was recently asked to do a trade with someone, she wanted my handmade jewelry and was offering the Arbonne brand health & beauty products she sells. So having no clue what Arbonne is I look at the site. There's zero useful info on the items in the catalog. Example: muscle massage cream...no info given other than its botanical based and is good for muscle strains and sprains. Hmm ok I'll skip that because I can't see ingredients anywhere and I'm allergic to fungi and to capsicum I'd rather not swell up and turn purple you know.

Looking further I find a joint supplement - again no other info. This is frustrating as hell. I give up and start googling for Arbonne ingredients - their own pledge is the info should be provided - in a list form for every item - it might be on the finished product but if I have to google your ingredients for every ingredient you make I'm so not interested in wasting that much time.

Finally 8 websites later I find out the info for Arbonne's products is on their info pages NOT in the catalog so I have to flip back and forth repeatedly and am quickly getting fed up (because I want to know price/value/cost on x item AND see its ingredient list all at once, realizing most of their stuff seems REALLY overpriced compared to even GNC branded stuff which has always gotten good reviews on actually containing the levels their labels say the contain (and everything GNC has is listed in info on the same page as their prices).

To me this just screams that Arbonne wants to be difficult and wants me to do more leg work than I'm willing to do only to spend more money than I want to spend, a LOT more.

So as I'm reading the random mostly useless ingredient list "proprietary blend of herbs & botanicals" - I realize I'm not going to be able to do a trade because there's NOTHING listed for most of these items except confusing mumbo jumbo and no REAL info. I'd much rather purchase skin care items from friends who do handmade in small batches and KNOW what goes into the items than to spend (or trade away) a large value of stuff for something it turns out I can't even use.

But being a good trader I keep looking for info. One site links me to a bunch of 'terms' for skin care including a lot that Arbonne apparently uses - which the site in question claims are anything but natural. Said site "nochemicalcosmetics.com" says Limonene is a petroleum refining byproduct that is both carcinogenic and toxic, and an allergen (ok I get the allergen part as I know people allergic to citrus everything), but the toxic/carcinogenic bit is a bit much - otherwise don't you think they'd limit the sale of orange rind, lemon rind and other citrus rind by products - namely essential oils? Then again I've read other articles stating Limonene comes from citrus rinds (its what makes lemon peel smell & taste like lemons when you cook with it)..and the # 1 producer of limonene is the citrus industry. Methinks there's scare-tactics in the air. So I continue reading the list, flipping back and forth to Arbonne's pages of not real  helpful stuff, and see other things they include that the nochemicalcosmetics also says are toxic... [note yes in very high doses it can cause cancer in lab rats, but humans would need a much higher dose than would be feasible over long or short term as to cause carcinogenicity in humans.]

Next said site states PEG is almost always toxic unless the mfg follows certain procedures to remove the toxic bits - I'm confused this stuff is in everything and most people don't develop the specific types of cancer related to the two contaminants that she refers to. I'm so frustrated at having to hunt for ingredients for the Arbonne stuff that its like beating my head against a brick wall to feel warm - fruitless and frustrating.

I'm at the point now that unless the trade person has something specific I want, at a reasonable trade price (she's doing clearance stuff mostly), that I'm simply going to be not interested as its more work and hassle than I want to spend time on right now, especially when there are other companies out there that provide price & ingredients on the same page, and list ALL their ingredients, even if it is a trade secret type thing.

Stay tuned - if you see a part two - note that I did go through with the trade, and I will review how the trade went and how the product(s) are.

-Frawggie-