Healthy Living Books Books

Rating: - Interesting, but not as informative/time saving as I was expecting
I have bought all of the Beauty Bibles which have come out over the years and was very excited about this one as I have made the move to more natural brands in the past year or so and wanted to see which other products might perform better than my current choices.

As many of the other reviewers have said, the products featured in the book are by no means all natural or organic, and there were very few of the 3 daisy rated products in there at all; because they only feature the items which scored the best in their consumer tests I'm not sure if this is because the testers tried the all natural products but really didn't like them, or if they were not trialled at all. Would be useful to have a run down in each category of what was actualy tested to give readers more of an idea.

I was hoping to save myself some time scouring labels for 'nasties' in the ingredients lists when shopping for products, but as many of them were only either 1 or 2 daisy rated, I ended up still having to check on the products I liked the sound of anyway to see what was actually in them before purchasing.

The section I was most interested in reading was about make up - not the authors' fault but many of the products which did well were from Origins (not really all that natural!) who withdrew their colour cosmetics range in the UK soon after the book was published. Again, I would love to know which natural/mineral ranges were actually tested as the market for these types of products has exploded recently and the same brands came up as 'winners' time & time again.

If you have only just thought about trying out more 'naturally inspired' products and would like some pointers, or have never purchased any of the other Beauty Bibles then this would be worth buying. But if like me you were hoping for a short cut to identifying as-natural-as-possible brands without the legwork then this book is not for you.

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Rating: - A gorgeous book
As a great lover of natural beauty products, this book was the perfect present for me. Not only is the book beautiful to look at, but the authors are incredibly knowledgeable and authoritative. All of the products in the book have been tried and tested, which is really reassuring. This book is perfect for anyone who wants to know what they are putting on their skin.

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Rating: - Very Informative
I love my organic products that I use & was really looking forward to this book arriving. I was surprised at the size of the book so found it excellent value for money. I like the idea that all products were tested on women for a reasonable amount of time, it made me feel more confident in buying the products. But saying that I was VERY DISSAPOINTED that there are hardly any products with the 3 daisy rating, seeing as there are loads of products out there which come under this catagory. I was really hoping to find more testing of products from the 3 daisy products. I thought the book let me down on this as I like many other readers were hoping to find some new products without having to waste money trying them out first.
Very good but shame about the lack of organics.

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Rating: - worth a look but limited
I was a little disappointed with this. Although it is a large book full of lots of information it doesn't tell you how many brands were given out for testing (and how many were tested), also the daisy rating doesn't give enough detail. Generally the same few, expensive, brands came up continuously. This might mean they were the only good ones but there was no way to be certain. However, its good to see this subject being highlighted and there were some interesting mini-articles on items such as mineral make up which shows things are not always as 'green' as you think they are.

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Rating: - Disappointed
I was looking forward to reading this book as I've been "going down" the Green route for awhile now.
The book doesn't cover enough products and very few of them are 100% natural. Yes, I did read the Daisy rating where it clearly states that not all products are of 100% origin but to me that's not good enough.

A fair amount of this book is dedicated to their friends and their products together with pretty pictures and profiles. Sure, that's interesting but I can read about these women (If I choose to, which I don't) in magazines.

Another thing that really irritated was the fact that ALL products tested weren't mentioned so that hardly leaves the reader with a huge choice so I'll continue using the products I do and carry on with my own investigations into what is and what isn't suitable for my skin. Also, I noticed a lot of the products are for more Normal/Dry skins. Where another variant was available, very few comments were made.

As Journalists I expected them to know the difference between less and few. Also, they used the phrase "trialled" ad nauseum. Sure, it's a recent addition to the OED but "trialled" is used out of context and isn't a verb. Maybe I'm just incredibly fussy when it comes to editing and proof reading of books but when a phrase or word is used so much, it gets really annoying, to the point where you end up losing the will to live, let alone finish the book.