The olive incident, which has caused an uproar in the industry in the past two months, has recently made new developments.
On April 15, Luo Wangyu posted three videos on Douyin and Xiaohongshu platforms, responding in detail to many questions about the non-detection of oleuropein in CSS Xiyan Olive Extract, he said that in the past month, his studio has made 42 test reports, visited 9 experts, and interviewed two of the raw materials and testing experts to comprehensively answer the questions related to the composition of olive leaf extract.
Screenshot from the homepage of Luo Wangyu's Douyin account
Immediately after April 19, @大虎课代表再度回应, said that the CSS Xiyancui brand had claimed that the product contained oleuropein, and at the same time broke out a new "big melon", such as the four ingredients of centella asiatica extract, which ranked third in the product ingredient list, and pantothenic acid, which ranked fourth, were not detected, and it also detected the ingredient butylene glycol that was not written in the record, and called on the brand to give consumers "money back".
It is worth noting that on the same day, the official flagship store of CSS Xiyancui Douyin closed the product window, and all the products in the store are not displayed at present. "CSS is no longer searchable on Douyin's official flagship store. Some netizens complained on social media platforms.
Screenshot from the official flagship store of CSS Xiyancui Douyin
In just two months, this public opinion incident has triggered a "crisis of trust" in consumers in brands and bloggers, and the lack of research and testing standards for plant-derived raw materials, as well as the scientific communication of brands, have become the focus of discussion in the industry.
The Great Investigation of the Oleocanthal Incident
Luo Wangyu's latest response
Looking back on the whole incident, the cause originated from the video content released by the representative of the evaluation blogger @大虎课 on February 24, which evaluated 6 olive extract products and found that four of them were not high in oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol, and the two iconic ingredients were not detected in the composition of the olive extract of C in the United States.
In other words, this C olea olea extract product does not put olive oil. "@大虎课代表表示, according to the mainland's consumer protection and cosmetics industry filing requirements, the product seems to be illegal.
After that, the American CSS brand and Luo Wangyu, the head anchor who recommended the product, became the focus of attention, and related brands and celebrities were involved. In the past two months, well-known KOLs including Bing Han Skin Care, Daddy Evaluation, and Junping Demon King have also come out one after another to speak out about this incident.
This time, in the latest video, Luo Wangyu joined industry experts to respond to "whether oleuropein should be detected or not to determine whether the product is added with olive extract" and "the relationship between oleuropein content and concentration and product efficacy". Combined with the video of the investigation and the answers of several experts, we can focus on the following information:
Screenshot from @Luo Wangyu Douyin related video
1. CSS oleocanthal is not a batch problem, and oleuropein was not detected in all batches.
As for CSS olive extract, some bloggers previously questioned that it sent the CSS olive extract product with a production batch of January 2022 for testing, and the results showed that oleuropein was detected, "or the brand has tampered with it, and there is a problem between the product batches." ”
In this regard, Luo Wangyu responded that he commissioned the same institution to test the same olive product in multiple batches in the past two years, covering all batches of CSS olive extract products from 2022 to early 2024, and found that oleuropein was not detected in all of them, which indicates that it is not a batch problem.
In the dialogue session, Li Qiong, vice president of Shanghai Daily Chemical Association and director of the Standardization Technical Committee, and consultant of Shanghai Intertek Quality Technology Service Co., Ltd., said that there is no corresponding testing standard for oleuropein in the cosmetics industry, and the test methods of different laboratories may be different, and even if it is the same method, the final test results are closely related to multiple factors and links such as injection, pretreatment, and the experience of testing personnel.
2. It is not scientific to completely equate oleocanthal with oleuropein or hydroxytyrosol, and oleuropein is not detected, which does not mean that there is no olive extract added to the product.
According to public information, olea europaea extract is mainly olea europaea leaf extract, containing more than 100 kinds of phenolic substances, and 50 kinds of polyphenols have been named, and more than 20 kinds have been verified to have relevant effects. Among them, at this stage, the industry generally recognizes that polyphenols such as oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol play a functional role.
Luo Wangyu said in the video that he tested 36 olive products on the market, and half of them were not found oleuropein, including many large group brands. "So, is this kind of olive products that have not been detected oleuropein a false propaganda, or can they also be found not to have oleuropein?" he came to the conclusion - "It is a personal standard and unscientific to verify the unadded olive extract with the undetected oleuropein." ”
In this regard, Li Qiong said that there is no correlation and science between whether oleuropein is detected and whether olea olea extract is added. To a certain extent, this confirms the reasonableness of the above conclusions.
"If only oil olive extract is in the product, there may be reasons why it cannot be detected normally: first, the content is below the detection limit, and second, it may be degraded. A practitioner in the raw material industry told "Cosmetics Observation" that usually brands do not add a separate ingredient (oligopicrin), if the brand is to follow the market trend and cater to the words of consumers or anchors, it may add additional oleuropein, which can be detected but is a "side ball", because the additional addition is not compliant.
According to the "Catalogue of Used Cosmetic Raw Materials (2021) Edition", there are 19 kinds of raw materials related to "olea europae" in China, and oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol are not included in the catalogue of used raw materials. In addition, it is not a mandatory national standard to consider oleuropein as a signature ingredient for testing oleocanthal extract for added eocanthal extract.
3. Oleuropein is not the decisive factor in the efficacy of the product, and the focus is still determined by the overall formula and technology. To judge the effect of the product, we should trust the authoritative evaluation of human efficacy.
In the video, Luo Wangyu said that he screened 15 brands of olive products with the core effect of soothing redness, and evaluated the human efficacy of the instant reddening effect, and finally obtained 627 sets of test data according to 30 effective sample sizes, and the results showed that among the top five products in terms of efficacy, three products were not detected oleuropein.
He believes that consumers buy cosmetics more for "safety, effectiveness, quality and low price." "The efficacy of CSS olive extract has been tested before, and this product has been favored by many consumers for a long time in the past. "Why is it all of a sudden, it's not working?" he asked rhetorically.
In response to the causal relationship between oleuropein and product efficacy, which is hotly discussed by consumers, Mei Hexiang, an expert of the Cosmetics Committee of China Chemical Pharmaceutical Industry Association and founder of Futu Medicine, said that whether plant extracts can achieve efficacy is a manifestation of comprehensive efficacy, not only determined by a specific ingredient.
Industry insiders generally believe that the evaluation of the efficacy of plant extracts does not rely on the content and concentration of a single ingredient, but on the results of cell tests, in vitro and in vitro tests. Li Qiong also pointed out that the high content of oleuropein does not contribute much to the efficacy of the product, and the 1% dividing line in the cosmetic ingredient list is not applicable to plant extracts.
"Hammered" one after another?
CSS Douyin official store products have been removed from the shelves
Although Luo Wangyu responded through the test report, as well as the joint raw materials and testing experts, many consumers do not buy it at present, and think that Luo Wangyu is "whitewashing", "avoiding the heavy and light", "the front foot says that it loses money, and the back foot is whitewashed and stepped on", "he is really strong", many netizens commented.
It can be seen that on the consumer side, "whether the money can be refunded" is still the focus of public attention and discussion.
"Cosmetics Observation" noticed that at present, there are 274 complaints containing "CSS" keywords on the Black Cat complaint platform, and "false publicity", "formula fraud", "deception of consumers" and other high-frequency words are high-frequency complaints, while in the official mini program of "Consumer Insurance", the 315 complaint platform under the China Electronic Chamber of Commerce, searches for CSS keywords, and the relevant complaint records have exceeded 1,000.
In addition to objective factors such as "the lack of national standards for olive extract and the lack of unified testing standards", some industry insiders believe that the CSS brand itself also has problems such as exaggerating the functional ingredients and hyping the concept of ingredients.
According to the latest video released by the representative of @大虎课, the CSS brand's previous tweets on Xiaohongshu and the brand's self-broadcast room have claimed that the product contains a high concentration of oleuropein. And this is also the point where the brand is questioned by consumers.
Screenshot from the relevant video posted by the representative of @大虎课
"If the brand itself advertises oleuropein, it should provide proof accordingly. Some industry insiders bluntly said, "the national standard is the minimum standard that all products in the world must follow to enter the Chinese market, more focus on safety, in addition to many corporate standards, if the brand claims to add XX content of active ingredients, and related efficacy, it should be on top of the national standard to do more testing proof, and their own evidence." ”
Not only olive products, but also many other functional products of the CSS brand are currently caught in the "whirlpool" of public opinion.
@老爸评测在3月15日发布的视频中称, it bought all the products of the CSS brand line through notarization for testing, and found that the brand ingredients were counterfeit. He said that in the CSS blue copper peptide essence, it detected bright blue pigment that was not indicated in the ingredient list, and another arbutin essence that was exposed by a blogger last year, officially claimed that the product contained 7.7% arbutin, but the test results showed that the α-arbutin content was only 1/1000. "Judging from the results so far, this brand is very problematic. ”
Coincidentally. @大虎课代表昨日发布的视频中, it was revealed that the four types of components of centella asiatica extract and pantothenic acid in the CSS olive extract ingredient list were not detected, and at the same time, the ingredient butylene glycol, which was not specified in the record, was detected in the product, "and the ingredient is not a trace amount". In this regard, Li Haishan, executive deputy general manager of CCIC (Tianjin) Inspection and Inspection Co., Ltd., said that pantothenic acid has a standard testing method stipulated by the state, and if it cannot be detected, it is very likely to involve violations of laws and regulations.
Screenshot from the relevant video posted by the representative of @大虎课
According to the Measures for the Administration of Cosmetics Labeling, cosmetics labels shall be marked with the standard Chinese names of the raw materials of the comprehensive ingredients of cosmetics on the visible surface of the sales packaging, and the "ingredients" shall be used as a guide to be introduced, and the formula content shall be listed in descending order. If there are ingredients with a content of no more than 0.1% (w/w) in the cosmetic formula, "other trace ingredients" shall be used as a guide to introduce and be separately labeled.
Nowadays, with the voices of major bloggers, the CSS brand has become the unpopular. On April 19, the official flagship store of CSS Xiyancui Douyin closed the product window, which also triggered further suspicion and complaints from consumers about the brand. "The money hasn't been returned yet, and the brand has run away?"
In this regard, "Cosmetics Observation" consulted the official customer service of the CSS Douyin store, and received a response that the store page and warehouse system are being upgraded, and the store is expected to be re-launched next week.
"There are no winners under involution"
The other side of the olive scandal
In the era of efficacious skin care, volume ingredients and spelling technology have become the norm in the industry, and industry chaos such as exaggerating product efficacy and talking about efficacy without dosage is also common.
The continuous fermentation of the olive incident, before the official conclusion, caused the CSS brand and Luo Wangyu to encounter a huge crisis of trust, which reflected the impetuousness of the market, and also sounded the alarm for brands, bloggers, and even the industry, and the importance of science communication was once again highlighted.
Just as @Junping Big Demon King, he sighed in the face of the incident: "In this incident, bloggers, brands, and consumers did not win. He said that at present, the concentration of many brand ingredients is getting higher and higher, and the cost cannot be reduced due to the consideration of marketing expenses, and the bloggers who can serve their fans well also need to undertake quality supervision work to send products for inspection in order to verify their own product selection ability, which is very tiring. In the end, consumers didn't benefit.
From the perspective of raw materials, olive as a popular ingredient that has emerged in the past two years was once sought after by the market. Now, what is the impact of the olive turmoil on the market application of raw materials and the industry?
"After this incident, the raw materials related to olive leaf extract will be 'wasted'. Because no brand dares to hype up this concept, consumers have been educated that they will not believe this kind of product. Some industry insiders said.
Xue Xifeng, secretary general of Shaanxi Plant Extraction Industry Association and founder of Xi'an Lutian Biotechnology Co., Ltd., believes that this has little impact on the use of olive leaf extract in the cosmetics industry, and has a certain benefit to domestic raw materials. He said that this has driven the beauty sector to require a clear active ingredient content when choosing olive leaf extract and even the raw material for the extract. However, domestic olive leaf happens to have the tradition of labeling active ingredients, which is conducive to the development of domestic olive leaf extract.
At the same time, he pointed out that "the lack of adequate trial data for olea europaea leaf extract is its biggest market constraint, not consumer disappointment." For example, he said that the whitening effect of glabridin has been fully demonstrated and widely recognized, even if some people add concepts that make consumers doubt, its excellent whitening effect will still not affect the proportion of the raw material.
In fact, this is also a common problem that plant extract ingredients are currently facing.
Mei Hexiang also mentioned that the olive controversy is not an isolated incident, but a lack of underlying logic. The "olive controversy" is not an isolated incident of plant components, the root cause of the reaction is the lack of plant standardization, the underlying logic has not been built, and the related logic has become complex and fragile.
To a certain extent, the olive incident also reflects the industry's low level of education on the market of plant extract ingredients and the lack of scientific understanding of consumers about such ingredients, which is also conducive to making all walks of life realize that it is imperative to promote the standardized application and sustainable development of plant extract ingredients in cosmetics.
"There is still a long way to go in formulating the standard for plant extracts, but I believe that to a certain extent, it will promote enterprises and authoritative institutions to try and actively participate, so as to boost the development of the cosmetics industry. An industry source said.
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