Extraordinary Health Magazine EH Magazine VOl 33_Final | Page 26

What it Means for Essential Oils to be
100% Pure
by Dawn Thorpe Jarvis, Senior Director of
Nutrition Science & Educational Content
When it comes to Essential Oils, there are
certainly plenty of brands to choose from.
So how does someone new to Aromatherapy,
or someone who is already buying and looking
for a premium quality pure oil, choose which
brands are actually 100 percent pure? And what
does 100 percent pure truly mean?
With the launch of Garden of Life’s new line of 100% Organic &
Pure Essential Oils, we expect people to ask us questions such as,
“Are all your essential oils Certified Organic?” and “Are they also
Non-GMO Project Verified?” Of course the answer is—yes to both;
our entire line of Essential Oils is dual-certified because that
is our gold standard as a brand. This fact alone sets us apart
from almost all other brands of essential oils as only a handful
of products are actually Certified Organic and very few are
Non-GMO Verified. Even fewer oils have dual certification—third-
party certification—which is the true measure for a clean product.
When partnering with a company having 168 years of
experience producing essential oils, we learned that there
is another very important quality standard to look for when
buying oils: That standard is 100 percent pure.
To most consumers, the term 100 percent pure sounds simple
enough. To most it means just a straight oil that is not mixed
or diluted with a carrier oil such as olive oil, which is common
practice for massage oils. The ingredient information on the
label will help you to identify if carrier oils are added. However,
for essential oil experts, the term 100 percent pure has a deeper
meaning and truly defines the quality of the oil and the integrity
of the supplier. Let me briefly explain what it means to be 100
percent pure to an oil expert.
First, we have to check the identity of the plant. For example,
if we are producing organic lavender oil, we need to define which
particular species of the botanical genus lavender that we wish
to use to make the essential oil such as Lavandula angustifolia.
Botanical identity of the lavender oil is performed using different
methods to make sure that it is only that one species of lavender
that is extracted and there is no other species of lavender mixed
in—it is 100 percent Lavandula angustifolia oil.