Small Habits for Big Smiles - How to Recognize an Authentic Essential Oil

More and more often, we find essential oils on the market with vastly different prices, or encounter small bottles containing undecipherable "essences" at a market stall. This creates the need to better understand how to choose the right product, how to find an intact and pure essential oil that carries the characteristics of the plant from which it was extracted. There are many ways in which essential oils are adulterated, and some substances cannot be identified except through laboratory tests. Given the circumstances, it is very difficult for the consumer to determine the integrity of an oil. Despite this, the first precaution to take is to check a certain number of details and guarantees on the label. These include: - the plant, the botanical name in Latin must be indicated, specifying the genus, species, and variety; - the part of the plant extracted (if it is not obvious what it is); - the origin, meaning the country of provenance; - the type of cultivation from which it originates (wild plants, organic cultivation, bio-dynamic cultivation, conventional cultivation, etc.); - the extraction methods (steam distillation, cold pressing, absolute); - the quality of the oil itself, which must be 100% natural, without the addition of synthetic components. - the production lot number. An additional indication is also given by the price; it is very unlikely to obtain a quality product at an excessively low cost. The production of some very precious essential oils, such as rose and jasmine, requires an exorbitant quantity of flowers to extract just a few milliliters. The best roses, with about 70-80 buds, give us one drop of oil. For this reason, particularly valuable essential oils are usually sold in 1 ml packages. Alternatively, they can be marketed already diluted in alcohol or vegetable oil. Another way to make these oils more "accessible" is to distill them together with a high-yield plant that has synergistic or complementary properties; obviously, this synergistic distillation should be appropriately declared. With time and experience, one learns to instinctively recognize a pure product from a synthetic or adulterated one. Over the years and through practice, a nose can even understand how the plant was harvested and distilled, if all its notes are present, or if it has been affected in any way by the processing. Selecting essential oils is a job that requires great experience and listening, recalling ancient knowledge. Learning to listen to Nature. Happy listening to all, Barbara Pozzi and the Olfattiva staff* -The article is inspired by a paragraph from the book "Aromaterapia" by Maria Teresa Lucheroni and Francesco Padrini, which we recommend!-