Hamburgers and Lotion

How many ingredients are in your lotion?

Let's say you want a hamburger.  Why you ask, are we talking about hamburgers?  Hang in there, you will see in a minute.  Ok, so you want a hamburger, you can drive through some common fast food restaurant and get a double cheeseburger for a dollar, right?  So as far as your want goes, you have met it easily and cheaply.  I looked up some information on a fast food burger.  I will spare you the ingredients list, but guess how many ingredients it contains.  No really, guess.  You aren't guessing are you?  Okay, I will tell you, eighty-three.  Yes, you read that right, eighty-three ingredients in a cheeseburger.  Now, let's imagine a home cooking solution to your hamburger craving.  You have ground beef at home and decide to make your own cheeseburger.  You need beef, salt and pepper and maybe a few other spices if you like.  You can make buns, which would involve only five more ingredients.  We all top our burgers differently at home, so depending on the number of ingredients in those things, you could make a burger with anywhere from nine ingredients to maybe fifty, if you went all out with toppings.  I mean, LOTS of toppings.  Store bought toppings with multiple ingredients.  So, no matter what, the home made version has considerably less ingredients. If you purchase good ingredients, then they are also considerably healthier ingredients.  No high fructose corn syrup if you buy good ketchup and pickles.  No weird pink slime in your meat if you shop local and get good beef.  Good cheese contains very few ingredients.  You get the idea.  I am sure I will get little argument that the home version tastes better too.  So why do we eat fast food hamburgers?  Convenience, mostly.  We are out, the restaurant is there, the kids are hungry, it's just easier than going home and making the healthier version. 

Now let's talk lotion.  I just looked up a cheap brand of lotion that I could think of off the top of my head, one that I have used before.  You can buy a bottle for three dollars.  It contains twenty-one ingredients.  Lots of them are things that we should NEVER put on our skin, which is our largest organ that absorbs everything we put on it.  Petrolatum and fragrance, yuck!  The first one though... water.  The main ingredient in almost all store bought lotions is water.  Now let's talk about Sweet Girl ingredients.  Take our body mousse for example, it contains shea butter and coconut oil.  Our lotion bars contain shea butter, coconut oil and beeswax.  If you choose our scented products, they contain essential oil.  That is a total of four ingredients at the most.  Do you see where I am going with this?  They are healthy ingredients that are actually good for you, and you can pronounce.  Plus, you aren't paying for water.  The biggest difference though, is that they work.  I spent years using gallons of lotion because no matter how much I used, it never helped.  I can see a difference immediately after using a lotion bar. 

So, that's how burgers are related to lotion in my mind.  Small changes lead to big differences when it comes to health.  Now, who wants a burger?

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