Why we print percentages on the front

Pick up any shampoo that puts a plant on the front of the bottle. It will name the plant. It will very rarely tell you what percentage of the formulation that plant actually represents.

There is a reason for that. Botanical extracts are expensive relative to the surfactants and water that make up the bulk of a shampoo, and a formulation can legally carry a botanical's name on the front while containing a fraction of a percent of it. The industry term for this is a 'fairy dusting' — enough to justify the label, not enough to do anything.

We print the number. Amla at 1.5%, bhringraj at 1.0%, brahmi at 1.0%, shikakai at 2.0%, rosemary at 1.5%. Alongside the Latin binomial, so there is no ambiguity about which species you are getting.

This is not a heroic act. It simply means that when we make a claim about what an ingredient does, you can check whether there is enough of it present for the claim to be plausible. That should be the floor, not a differentiator.