If you’re wanting to live well, you probably do a lot to enjoy that: Eat more veggies, move your body more, work on stress not knocking you to the curb, invite good connections, relax and play. You don’t want to negate all that by slathering on beauty products that are like taking a bath in a toxic sea.

The shelves are awash in this gunk. Let’s hope change occurs soon so you don’t have to educate yourself just to go to the store. But, also know you can make better choices right now. Use fewer products; you’ll be just as clean and look just as good. Probably even better. Look for truly, honest-to-God natural brands. Learn to read those labels. You can get the short list on what’s good and what’s not at: Campaign for safe cosmetics – chemicals of concern. Consider making some of your own products — it’s really fairly easy and rather empowering. Plus you absolutely know what’s in it. Google natural homemade fill-in-the-blank, and you can find lots of ideas.

If you own an iPhone, there is an app called ThinkDirty that allows you to input a product’s name or scan the bar code to get an overview of how healthy the product you’re looking at buying really is. For Android phones, it looks like the best choice to get advice right there on your phone is SkinDeep’s app. It doesn’t get the best reviews, but, if it helps here and there without you memorizing products or carrying around a list, it could be helpful.

While you’re at it, take 8 minutes to watch this video that will fill you in quickly on what’s going on in the health and beauty industry and why you should be concerned.