Ep 375 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Clean Beauty from a Pharmacist's Perspective

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: ASCP Esty Talk
Episode: 375 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Clean Beauty from a Pharmacist's Perspective
Date: February 13, 2026
Host: Maggie Stasik (ASCP Program Director)
Guest: Ben Fuchs (Pharmacist, Skincare Formulator)

Main Theme:
In this episode, host Maggie Stasik interviews Ben Fuchs, "The Rogue Pharmacist," on the meaning and reality of "clean beauty" from a pharmacist and cosmetic formulator’s perspective. Together, they dissect industry buzzwords like "clean" and "natural," clarify common misconceptions, and discuss what truly matters in effective skincare: science and results, not marketing catchphrases.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of ‘Clean Beauty’ (01:12–06:58)

• "Clean beauty" lacks a scientific or regulatory definition.

  • Ben Fuchs immediately challenges the premise:

    “You don't. That's the answer. There's no such thing. I don't even know what it means. Do you know what it means?” (01:27, Ben)

  • Maggie admits confusion, echoing many consumers:

    “I don't know. I know what the marketing says mean.” (01:33, Maggie)

• From "Natural" to "Clean": Buzzwords Rebranded.

  • Ben reminisces about the days when "natural" was the term du jour—now replaced by "clean."

    “But really, what does that mean? ... So it's just this gibberish word, this meaningless word...” (01:50, Ben)

  • The allure of terms like clean or natural rests on their emotional and marketing impact, not science.

• The Pharmacist’s Core Priority: Efficacy Over Labels.

  • Ben draws a sharp line between pharmacy/medicine and beauty marketing:

    “From a pharmacist perspective, what we care about ... is one thing ... Does it work?” (02:52, Ben) “You don't care about any of that. You want [products] to work.” (02:54, Ben)

• The Innovation Crisis in Beauty (03:51)

  • The industry is running out of new things to hype, leading to "an innovation crisis":

    “You can only use so much snail slime and bee venom and snake poison … they're always looking for something that's going to be different … Instead of ... a different strategy … they're coming up with all kinds of ways to make their products sound like they're better than they are ... This is what clean beauty is really all about.” (03:51, Ben)

  • Marketing, not new science, creates these trendy distinctions.

• What’s Actually ‘Clean’? Ben’s Criteria: Friendliness to Cells

  • If anything is “clean,” it’s nutrients: vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids—ingredients essential to the cell:

    "That's as clean as it gets. ... The cleanest of all ingredients are the essential nutrients. So what I'm looking at and what I'm formulating is not necessarily cleanliness, but friendliness." (04:42, Ben)

  • Focus should be on what skin cells "love," not on vague marketing definitions.

• Marketing vs. Clinical Reality

  • Ben urges estheticians and consumers to see past "marketing contamination":

    “Today’s esthetician … has to be able to … tease out the marketing from what’s really happening in the skin. When you hear clean beauty, you’ve got this complete integration of verbiage and marketing and messaging and what really happens in the skin.” (05:32, Ben)

2. Ingredients Labeled “Dirty” or Misunderstood (06:58–11:24)

• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS): Demonized, But Not the Worst

  • While SLS is often cited as a “bad” ingredient, Ben calls out the hype:

    “There are probably milder surfactants, but [SLS is] just a surfactant … there’s way worse ingredients.” (08:00, Ben)

  • The real issue is surfactancy, which can disturb the skin’s oil-water balance.

• Preservatives: Necessary but Problematic

  • Preservatives can harm the skin microbiome, but they’re needed for shelf life. Formulation choices can minimize their use.

• Plant Materials: ‘Natural’ But Not Always Safe

  • Ben challenges the assumption that botanicals are inherently better:

    “Plant material can be very allergenic and very irritating … Even things that are soothing ingredients like lavender can sometimes be problematic for some people.” (09:22, Ben)

• Essential Oils vs. Fragrances

  • Essential oils, while “natural,” can be highly active and trigger immune responses—sometimes more so than synthetic fragrances.

• Vegetable Oils: Oxidation Dangers

  • Ben’s “pet peeve” is the widespread use of plant/seed oils, especially luxury ones:

    “Vegetable oils are a real problem because they oxidize, they become rancid, and they can oxidize right on the skin.” (10:20, Ben) “Ironically … mineral oil ... while it's not clean, I would not call it clean, is benign, it's inert and it has much less biochemical activity on the skin and it never oxidizes than a vegetable oil, ironically.” (11:00, Ben)

  • Jojoba oil is the exception; it does not oxidize and is generally safe.

• Ingredient Deck Vigilance

  • Ben encourages ingredient deck reading and skepticism—especially about "pretty" or trending oils:

    "If you see a vegetable oil on the skin in the ingredient deck ... you can assume that's a poorly formulated product, especially ... the fancy schmancy vegetable oils, hazelnut oil and macadamia nut oil.” (10:40, Ben)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Definition of Clean Beauty:

  “There’s no such thing. I don't even know what it means.”
  — Ben Fuchs (01:27)

• On What Matters Most:

  “From a pharmacist perspective … all I care about is, is the ingredient or the product going to have an effect ... that I want on the skin.”
  — Ben Fuchs (02:58)

• On Industry Trends:

  “This is what clean beauty is really all about. … They're coming up with all kinds of ways to make their products sound like they're better than they are.”
  — Ben Fuchs (04:14)

• On Essential Nutrients:

  “The cleanest of all ingredients are the essential nutrients.”
  — Ben Fuchs (05:01)

• On Marketing vs. Science:

  “Marketing contaminates everything. And today’s esthetician … has to be really savvy and … tease out the marketing from what's really happening in the skin.”
  — Ben Fuchs (05:18)

• Vegetable Oils vs. Mineral Oil:

  “Vegetable oils … they oxidize, they become rancid, and they can oxidize right on the skin ... Mineral oil ... is benign, it's inert and it has much less biochemical activity on the skin and it never oxidizes than a vegetable oil, ironically.”
  — Ben Fuchs (10:20, 11:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:55–01:12 — Episode introduction, guest welcome.
• 01:12–03:51 — The meaningless nature of “clean beauty”; focus on what works.
• 03:51–06:58 — The innovation crisis, marketing hype, focus on nutrients, and how “clean” conflates marketing with efficacy.
• 06:58–11:24 — Ingredient misconceptions: exfoliants, SLS, preservatives, botanicals, essential oils, vegetable oils, mineral oil.
• 11:24 — Closing information and resources.

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Conclusion

This episode pulls back the marketing curtain, urging estheticians and skincare professionals to focus on ingredient efficacy and cellular compatibility—not vague or trendy claims like “clean beauty.” Ben Fuchs provides a science-first approach, reminding listeners to read ingredient lists critically and remember that ingredients often praised for being “natural” or “clean” can actually be more problematic than their synthetic or less glamorous counterparts. For those navigating the confusing skincare marketplace, the episode offers clarity and actionable insight grounded in science and formulation expertise.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello and welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin knightfoods. In each episode, we'll explore how internal and external external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasik, ASCP's program director, and joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey, Ben.

[C]

Hello, Mackie.

[B]

Ben, this may be a trigger for you, but clean beauty means a lot of different things, depending on who you ask. From a pharmacist and formulator's point of view, how do you define clean beauty in a way that is actually rooted in science?

[C]

You don't. That's the answer. There's no such thing. I don't even know what it means. Do you know what it means?

[B]

I don't know. I know what the marketing says mean.

[C]

Yes, yes, I know. And even, even in a marketing stamp, from a marketing standpoint, does it mean that you're, that your ingredients are sustainable? Does it mean that they're non toxic? Does it mean that your body can handle it? I don't really know what that means. You know, when I started many years ago in this business, there was a word that is still used today, but not as much as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when I started doing skincare. And this was a word that used to make me so mad. I used to hear this all the time. You know what word I'm talking about? Natural. Right. And so I used to think, what the heck does that even mean? But when you hear it, you think of like, you know, I was, I have this picture in my head of that Herbal Essence commercial where the lady's in the forest with the butterflies in her hair and all that, and there's this kind of good feeling associated with natural. But really, what does that mean? It comes from nature. Like what doesn't come from nature? So it's just this gibberish word, this meaningless word, and now you don't hear it as much, but now you hear clean beauty. So what the heck is that about? First of all, you ask, from a pharmacist perspective, what we care about in the world of pharmacy is one thing. You go to the drugstore and you get your birth control pill, your antibiotic, your beta block or whatever it is that you get. What's the one thing you care about? Only one.

[B]

Does it work?

[C]

Does it work? Do you care? The color, the smell, the influencer, clean, natural. You don't care about any of that. You want to work. So you say, from a pharmacist perspective, clean beauty. I don't even know what it means, but I don't care. I want products that work. They're gonna have an effect on the skin, a beneficial effect. I don't want toxicity, I don't want drugs, I don't want anything that's going to have adverse reactions or side effects or induce an immune response, for sure. But within that framework of non, non act, non immune, activating and non toxic and non, nothing's going to cause side effects or adverse reactions. All I care about is, is, is the ingredient or the product going to have an effect or have the effect that I want on the skin so clean? No pharmacist will ever say clean beauty, just like no pharmacist will ever say natural, because none of those are really relevant and there's no real definition for them in skincare. We have something today called the innovation crisis. Have you heard of this?

[B]

No.

[C]

This is literally a thing. They call it the innovation crisis. And that is, nobody knows what else to do. You can only go. You can only use so much snail slime and bee venom and snake poison and whatever. Herbs from the rainforest is limited. And so they're always looking for something that's going to be different, something new, instead of coming up with a different strategy, especially a formulation strategy, which is what we do at Truth, they're coming up with all kinds of ways to make their products sound like they're better than they are, more effective than they are, distinguish them in the marketplace. And this is what clean beauty is really all about. The real, the cleanest ingredients, if you really want to know what the cleanest ingredients are going to be, is going to be nutrients. In fact, we know from the inside, from perspective, the inside of the body, if you have a heart problem or you have a joint problem, or you have an immune problem, whatever it is, we all know that there's one class of ingredients that you take internally, that's going to create a safe change. What is that class? Nutrition, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. That's as clean as it gets. Because the body, and by the body I mean the cells of the body, have evolved over the course of billions of years, three and a half billion years at the the advanced cells have been on, or the cells have been on planet earth over that three and a half billion years, they've evolved a menu from which to eat from. And those that menu is what we call largely anyway, the essential nutrients. So that's the cleanest of all ingredients are the essential nutrients. So what I'm looking at and what I'm formulating is not necessarily cleanliness, but friendliness. To me, I want to know what does the cell love? What does the skin cell in specific for skincare? What is its favorite thing to digest, assimilate, incorporate? And that clearly is nutrition. And to me, that's going to be the cleanest of clean beauty. So from a marketing perspective, there's an unsavory relationship between skincare, health care, addressing diseases and pathologies and marketing. And unfortunately, in the world we have today, marketing contaminates everything. And today's esthetician, today's clinician, even non skin clinician and today's consumer has to be really savvy and has to be able to kind of wade through the marketing contamination and tease out the marketing from what's really happening in the skin. And when you hear clean beauty, you've got this complete integration of verbiage and marketing and messaging and what really happens in the skin. At the end of the day, your consumer wants products that work, estheticians want products that work. And certainly you don't want toxicity and adverse reactions. As I said before, and it's always from a moral perspective, it's nice to have, you know, sustainable ingredients. But at the end of the day, you got wrinkles, you want them gone, you got acne, you want it gone, you have eczema or whatever rosacea, whatever skin problem you have, you want it gone. And cleanliness is not a criteria that is going to tell you whether a product is going to address whatever your particular skin problem is.

[B]

Are there ingredients commonly labeled as like, quote, unquote, dirty, for lack of a better word, that are misunderstood or even unfairly, like demonized?

[C]

You know, there are alpha, but not among people who really know what they're talking about. So, for example, you hear sometimes people talking about exfoliations being a problem, exfoliating ingredients, and so their position Is. Is you don't want to be aggressive on the skin. And so to. To those people, not me, but to those people, yeah, that's an ingredient that is, I consider to be very effective, but has kind of a bad rap. On the other hand, there are ingredients that are really kind of. They've been given a bad rap, but they're really not any worse than any other ingredients. And when I think of those kinds of ingredients, I think of sodium lauryl sulfate. You know, you've heard of. You know, these days, everybody knows sodium lauryl sulfate is something to stay away from, but as it turns out, there's way worse ingredients than sodium lauryl sulfate. Sodium. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a surfactant, and surfactants in general are going to be problematic, but sodium lauryl sulfate is not really that much more problematic than any other surfactant, although there are. There are probably milder surfactants, but it's just a surfactant. And the problematic nature of sodium lauryl sulfate is based in its surfactancy, the fact that will disturb the oil water balance of the skin. Preservatives can be a problem. Obviously, you need to have preservatives in products, but if a product is formulated correctly, you could do it without preservatives. And I formulate my products as much as possible without preservatives, but they can be problematic. And. And these days, there's milder preservatives, but the standard preservatives that are in the standard products, those are things you want to be very careful of, because you have a microbiome on your skin, and you're gonna be killing the microbiome on the skin. Another misunderstood ingredient is plant material. People have this kind. And again, it gets to this idea of natural and, you know, the kind of connotation that plants and botanicals have. But plant material can be very allergenic and very irritating to the skin and can trigger immune response. All kinds of immune responses. Even. Even things that are soothing ingredients like lavender can sometimes be problematic for some people. So those are ingredients that are somewhat misunderstood. And then, of course, frag. Well, I was gonna say fragrances and essential oils, those can be problematic as well. Sometimes people will say, oh, I use essential oils. I don't use fragrances. Well, essential oils can be very medicinal and can be. Can trigger all kinds of reactions. And then another one. And this is a real pet peeve I have, and I've never formulated with these ingredients, which is vegetable oils. Oh. Now, these days, we're kind of hearing about Vegetable oils, you know, seed oils, they call them. Right, yeah. Um, but if anybody understands chemistry, they know vegetable oils are a real problem because they oxidize, they become rancid, and they can oxidize right on the skin. Not only that, but you don't know the oxidative status of a vegetable oil even before it's been put in a product. It'll cosmetic grade oils that skincare companies use, they're degraded already. They're non food based oils because they're already begun the oxidation process. And once the oil's cooked at the lab, at the factory, it's heated up in the product, et cetera, you've induced, you've accelerated oxidation on the skin. It, when it's, when it's exposed to oxygen, like when it's on your skin, or even the heat from your skin will further induce oxidation. And oxidized oils are a big no, no. So much so that if you look at an ingredient deck, and everybody should be ingredient deck readers, of course. And if you see a vegetable oil on the skin in the ingredient deck, that's a poor. You can assume that's a poorly formulated product, especially ironically, especially the fancy schmancy vegetable oils, hazelnut oil and macadamia nut oil. And these are, these are very omega 6 rich oils. And omega 6 is. Omega 6 oils oxidize very, very readily. So generally speaking, vegetable oils, while they have this kind of, you know, it sounds all well and good to use, you know, sound cute on the label and they sound pretty and they're natural, et cetera, they're very problematic. Jojoba oil is not a vegetable oil, and that is acceptable, and that does not oxidize. And interestingly, mineral oil, which is a. Comes from fossil fuels, basically, while it's not clean, I would not call it clean, is benign, it's inert and it has much less biochemical activity on the skin and it never oxidizes than a vegetable oil, ironically.

[B]

That concludes our show for today and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can find [e-mail] for more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs or to learn more about ascp, check out the show notes.