Thanks once again for visiting my Organic Hair Product Review blog! For those of you who don’t know, I’m Melanie Nickels, master stylist, and a ranking member & examiner of The American Board of Certified Hair Colorists. I am also the founder of the first non-toxic / organic salon in Southwest Florida, Raw Hair Organic Salon. I am the only organic educator in the ABCH organization, as well as the founder & creator of Raw Hair Organics, a nationally-known line of 100% natural / organic salon products.  I created this blog to give honest, unbiased, and most importantly,  professional feedback of organic / natural / non-toxic hair products. I hope you will value my opinions and advice, and I encourage all readers to provide feedback and questions to me by email.

This week, my choice of product to review is Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo and Pampering Conditioner. Both are for normal to dry hair. I purchased them at my local  Wal-Mart for about $9.00 each for a 16.9 ounce bottle. Yes To, Inc. was founded in 2006, as a private company, by Israeli-American Ido Leffler. They were originally headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, before moving it to San Francisco following it’s venture capital funding led by a VC firm that was located there. In 2009, Joy Chen was brought on as CEO, and founder Ido Leffler moved to the position of Head of Marketing. Ms. Chen was previouisly a brand manager at Clorox.  Clorox, if you aren’t aware, is the same company that purchased Burt’s Bee’s a few years ago.

Yes To, Inc. sells their products online through their e-commerce store, and in retailers such as the previously mention Wal-Mart stores, Walgreens, and several department stores. Yes To, Inc. donates a portion of it’s sales to the Yes To Seed Fund, a nonprofit that funds the planting of gardens in the US and Africa that will hopefully feed thousands of children. They also have a program called “Yes To Hope”, which grants money to children’s schools in the U.S. and Kenya. These are both good things.

Yes To, Inc. brands consist of Yes To Carrots, Yes To Tomatoes, Yes To Cucumbers, and Yes To Blueberries, all using natural ingredients like fruits and vegetables. As well as their hair products line, they have face care, body care, lip care, baby care, and SPF products.

I started with the Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo. The label claim is that it is 99.4% natural. They also claim to be petroleum, SLS, and paraben-free. It appears that there are only four organic ingredients in this product. On the label below the ingredient list there is a * (star) denoting “Certified Organic Ingredient”, which is how you can tell how many, if any, organic ingredients there are in each product.  The bottle has two icons on the bottom, one for being “Cruelty-Free”, the other for “Recycle”.  On the front of the label, it’s states that they use Dead Sea minerals, and “organic carrots that give your locks some Beta-Carotene Lovin’…”  I was not aware that Beta-Carotene applied topically to hair had any benefit, or “Lovin’ ‘ , as it were. So, I did some research, and stumbled upon a few studies from the New York University Medical Center website in an area for natural treatments. In those studies, the beta-carotene was not used topically. I found another study from 1996 about beta-carotene being used topically as a sunscreen. The results were inconclusive (as I understand it).  Thus, I’m not sure what the aforementioned statement on the front of the label means. Funny? I guess. Accurate? Not from what I could find. If you are looking for the benefit of beta-carotene for your hair, you need to take it internally….about 10,000-15,000 IU daily.

That being said, the shampoo had a decent texture, a decent lather (uses a coconut derivative surfactant), it made my hair feel clean but not stripped, and it rinsed fine.  The PH is high at 6.5 which could be bad for colored hair, and the synthetic fragrance was super strong which burned my husbands eyes.  There is also wheat germ oil which could be an irritant for those with wheat allergies.

Overall, not a bad product FOR THE MONEY. Could be better in this particular catagory that I’m reviewing, but it’s NINE dollars and not TWENTY dollars a bottle. So, that being said,  I rate it at 3.75 out of 5.

The Yes To Carrots Pampering Conditioner for normal to dry hair label states that it is 99.8% natural, paraben, petroleum, and SLS-free. It has three organic ingredients: carrot juice, carrot oil, and chamomilla recutita flower oil. 

The conditioner had a good consistency, made my dry curly hair feel soft, and it rinsed fine from the hair.  Again, the PH is high for my liking at 4.4, but better than the shampoo, and it has the same very strong synthetic fragrance and wheat germ oil.

Again, could be better, but not a bad product FOR THE MONEY. I give it a rating of 3.75 out of 5 as well.

If you are one of those people who are interested in using more “green” products but have just started making the change, by all means TRY YesTo Carrots. It’s a great start for newbies. I’m sure it’s better than what you’ve been using up to this point. If you are a hard-core “green” person, you probably won’t like the product. It’s not for you (and at $9.00, would you expect it to be?).

If YesTo get’s rid of the fragarence and goes with something natural, they’ll get a higher ranking from me. I really hope they do, because it’s a decent product at the pricepoint.

Until next time, here’s to great, healthy hair, and great healthy hair products.

Melanie