Review: SkinFood Aloe Vera Foaming Cleanser

(As always, image is from Amazon; I only had a couple sample packets, not a whole bottle.)

Hi, everybody! Sorry for the longer-than-usual gap between reviews. I spent most of last week and this weekend out of town, which brings me to the reason you’re getting this particular review this week.

See, I travel a lot (comes with the territory of being a grad student). And like anyone who travels a lot in the US, I don’t bother trying to check baggage when flying, which means I’m limited to the quart-size carry-on of liquids. This is a fun little optimization problem for anyone, as it’s basically Tetris but with leaky bottles of goop. Throw in the fact that I have curly hair, which means 2/3 of the available space is already taken up by my necessary hair products, and you understand why I’ve been on the lookout for ways to streamline my travel skincare products.

As it so happened, I had several cute little travel-sized packets of this particular cleanser in my sample stash, so I decided to use those instead of trying to decant my usual cleansers. And here we are!

Product Description: A surprisingly viscous, opaque cleanser that turns into a very fluffy lather with water. Has a fairly light scent, which is sort of soapy and garden-y. I think it’s supposed to be an aloe scent, but it’s closer to the old Bath and Body Works cucumber melon than anything. Which I’m not complaining about, as I liked that line a lot.



So, you’ll notice that I didn’t just say viscous, I said surprisingly viscous. And, y’all, I’m not kidding. This is basically a step away from a paste. You also only need a tiny amount to get a lot of foam. I discovered both these things simultaneously, as the first time I used it I dropped the packet trying to squeeze out a dime-sized dollop, and then just about overflowed the sink with the resulting quantity of lather. To be fair, I blame that partially on the fact that the hotel sink didn’t drain very well, so it wasn’t just user error.

After rinsing, my skin felt a bit tight and stripped. I didn’t think much of it, since I’m used to foam cleansers and that’s pretty par for the course for them. Besides that, I was in Wyoming at the time, and if a Wyoming winter won’t make your skin dry and tight, nothing will.

I continued to use this cleanser for the whole trip, morning and evening, and by about day 2-3 I could tell my skin just wasn’t having it. I’m no stranger to dry climates, and I’d packed my heaviest-duty night cream (usually way too heavy and grease-inducing for my skin) in preparation, which I was actually using twice a day by that point. What I hadn’t anticipated was how much my skin texture reacted: tons of closed comedones and an overall grainy texture. Just plain old dry weather will often make me break out around my nose or mouth…however, I ended up with a large pimple on my chin and another on my cheek by day 5. Most of the texture issues cleared up quickly once I got home and went back to my old cleansers, but I’m still fighting that darn chin pimple.

Overall: If your skin is hardier than mine (or the climate is amenable) and you want a good travel product, this is probably just about ideal. A little goes a long way, to the point where I actually only ended up using one sample packet over five days, and I still had some left over in that packet. However, this cleanser really didn’t work out for me. I originally thought it was just due to the dry weather, but having done some research once I got home, I think the formula just has too many mild irritants and comedogenic ingredients for my clog-prone skin. And that is the story of my first (but likely not only!) one-star review of an AB product.



Review: 1/5

1: “I will never use this product again and intend to immediately throw it away or return it”

2: “I’m not a big fan of the product, but I’ll probably use it once in a while”



3: “I’ll use up what I have, but don’t plan to repurchase this product”

4: “I really like the product, and will keep using it unless I find a better replacement”

5: “I absolutely love this product, and will probably never look for a replacement unless it’s discontinued or the formula changes”