About WithoutWith

WithoutWith is an independent ingredient-information website. We publish plain-language guides to the ingredients in everyday personal-care and household products: which ones some people choose to avoid, which ones are worth looking for, and how to read the label of any product for yourself.

Why this site exists

Ingredient lists are public information printed on every pack — but they are written in a technical language (INCI names) that most shoppers were never taught. Into that gap has rushed a great deal of confident, contradictory advice: one source calls an ingredient dangerous, another calls it essential, and a product's marketing usually answers whichever question sells the bottle. WithoutWith was created to slow that down. Our articles separate three things that are often blurred together: what an ingredient is and does in a formula; why some people prefer products without it (or with it); and what regulators and the research literature actually say, in proportion.

What we are not

We are not a shop, a testing laboratory, a medical service or a regulator. We do not sell products, we do not test products in a lab, and nothing here is medical advice. We are a publishing project: we read ingredient lists, regulatory publications and reference sources, and we write up what we find as clearly as we can. Where a question is genuinely medical — an allergy, a skin condition, a pregnancy concern — our articles will point you to a clinician rather than pretend to answer it.

How the site is organised

Content is organised around two main guides, so you can go as deep as you like. The Ingredients to Avoid guide and the Ingredients to Look For guide are the two starting points; each ingredient explainer links back to the guide it belongs to, and the buying guides turns the same knowledge into buying guides. If you find an error in any article, the corrections process in our editorial policy explains how it gets fixed — we would rather correct a page than leave a wrong one standing.

Who runs it

WithoutWith is published by Ali Hassan, an independent publisher based in Australia. The site is reader-funded in the ordinary way of the open web: display advertising and, in some guides, affiliate links keep the content free to read. Those commercial relationships never decide what an article says — see the editorial policy for the separation rules.

The two lists, and the guides that use them

The ingredients to avoid list is not a danger list. It collects the ingredients that a significant number of shoppers actively look for products without, together with the real, describable reason behind each one — a documented allergy pattern, a live regulatory debate, an environmental concern, or a matter of skin and hair fit. The ingredients to look for list is its mirror image: ingredients with a describable benefit and a reasonable body of supporting evidence, from barrier lipids like ceramides to the mineral UV filter zinc oxide. The buying guides then apply the two lists to real product categories, stating an ingredient rule first and only then naming products that meet it on their published labels.

How an article gets written here

Every explainer starts from the same three questions. What is this ingredient, and what job does it do in a formula? Why do some people avoid it, or seek it out? And what do regulators and the research literature actually say — as distinct from what headlines say they say? We work from primary material wherever possible: regulatory publications from bodies such as the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency, opinions of the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety, and reference databases such as EWG's Skin Deep. Findings are reported in proportion — a preliminary laboratory study is described as preliminary — and each article lists its sources in full so you can check them yourself. When a regulator changes position or a formulation changes, articles are updated and their date moves. The full method, including our evidence levels, is set out in the editorial policy.

What success looks like for this site

WithoutWith does not measure itself by how many products it talks you out of. It succeeds when a reader can pick up any bottle, turn it over, and reach their own decision in about thirty seconds — knowing what the first five ingredients are doing, recognising the names that matter to them, and understanding what a front-of-pack claim does and does not promise. If the site has a bias, it is that one: towards the label, and towards the reader's own judgement over anyone's marketing, including ours.

Questions, corrections and guide requests are welcome via the contact page.