It’s the start of a new year and once again many of us find ourselves spending more time cooking at home rather than eating unhealthy take-out. We search around the grocery store for whole grains, fruits and veggies packed with antioxidants, vitamins and healthy proteins like fish.
As much as we know we need to eat all these good-for-you staples, they don’t always taste great and we end up cooking them in our favorite oils and seasonings to create the perfect, delicious flavor.
My name is Betsy Wienslaw and I am a formulation chemist in the Living Proof Product Development group, and I experience situations like this every day- but with a twist!
Formulating new, luxurious products is very similar to cooking in that each shampoo, conditioner or styling product is a carefully crafted recipe designed to deliver the perfect amount of seasoning. Too much, and it may separate when you store it. Too little, and it might not enhance the overall taste of your dish.
Whether creating my own formulations or studying the ingredient listing in products on the shelves at my local Sephora, I’m always curious as to what role each ingredient plays to create such beautiful, effective products. Just like many of you, I sometimes wonder what made that chef (or, in some cases, chemist) decide to include that one special ingredient that catches my eye on the menu.
Somewhere in the Living Proof labs there is a group of chemists just like me, all of us whipping up new recipes every day. Part of what makes our work at Living Proof so interesting is handling the innovative active ingredients developed here in our labs- just like working with a brand new ingredient in your kitchen. We experiment with all the different seasonings we have in our labs to ensure that the magic Living Proof actives can perform exactly the way our scientists promise, giving you beautiful results you can see from across the room.
Can you guess what our favorite ingredients are?
I would love for you guys to create the spray that will allow curly/wavy hair to dry faster either air-drying or with a diffuser or straight blow dry. In my Midwestern winters (I try to air dry in the summer as much as possible) I can spend 20+ minutes holding a hair dryer with diffuser on my shoulder-blade length wavy/curly hair (even with a super powerful dryer). I know there used to be a product out there that John Frieda made to shorten dry time (and it worked pretty well but not fabulous) but they don’t make it anymore. I see a ton of new stylers but no one has been working on shortening the time I need to even dry my hair. Many other curly people I have talked to feel the same way — dry time is much longer on curly hair (for some reason). Can Living Proof try to tackle this new territory sometime soon? You would have little, if any, competition.