Switch Natural

An app to make your crunchy journey easier

I’m not sure where you are on your wellness journey or if you’re on one at all, but what I do know is it takes time. I became interested in wellness circa 2008– that’s 16 years ago! Over these past 16 years, I have learned new things, unlearned them, become my unhealthiest, overcome that unhealthiness and then learned some more things. The truth is, I’m still learning and unlearning every day. There are trends to navigate, new scientific research to consider, and then things that actually work for me as an individual, which change and evolve as I age and grow. Frankly, it can get overwhelming quickly, even to someone who has been into all this for as long as I have. That’s why I am always excited to find tools and resources that make my quest for ~wellness~ easier. The other day my bestie in wellness told me about a handy app that does just that. It’s called Switch Natural, and let me tell you, it’s already been transforming my household.

What is Switch Natural? It’s an app that tells you about the safety of the ingredients in your beauty, cleaning, personal care and baby/kid products. All you have to do is scan the ingredients on the back of any packaging—it uses your phone’s camera—and the app identifies any potentially toxic ingredients. If a toxic ingredient is detected, you can click it for a brief summary of what’s unsafe about it. The actual studies from which these conclusions are drawn are also linked for you to click on if you want to read the data yourself. It’s honestly genius and takes moments to calculate. If your product is clean, the screen simply says “no potentially harmful ingredients detected” with a big green check mark. I’ve already used it on some fancy hand soap that turned out to have endocrine-disrupting ingredients in it (sorry, OUAI) and I cleared a new hand soap that I just bought. I also tested an eye serum I got and learned that one of its ingredients is OK if naturally occurring but harmful if lab-made. This is how detailed and thorough this app is.

If you’re interested in Switch Natural, you can get it on the Apple app store for $19.99. I don’t think that’s a bad price for something as helpful as this. When I read the labels of beauty and cleaning products in particular, I feel less well-versed than when I’m reading food labels. With food, it’s much simpler—if I’ve heard of the ingredient as a whole food, it’s fine. If it’s a chemical or something weird, it could be suspect. If you look at a beauty or cleaning product, however, there are a lot of scientific names. Some of them refer to plants or chemical types, and I am far less familiar with those than I am with simple foods. With Switch Natural, I don’t need to learn anything extra—I can just take or upload a photo and the app does all the work for me. What’s even cooler? If a product comes up as containing toxic ingredients, you can click “find a clean option” and you’re taken to a page of safe products for you to shop. Many of these products come with a discount code from the app’s creator, which is also super cool.

If you’re looking to get into the crunchy life or just need some extra help on your crunchy journey, I 10/10 recommend Switch Natural. I just wish there were a version of this app for food! If you know any app developers, maybe send them this article and tell them to get to work…