Our Methodology

This page explains how Naatural.in researches what it publishes: what we check, how we check it, what we refuse to print, and who is responsible for it. It is written so that a sceptical reader can hold us to it.

How we check a brand’s claims

Most claims in the categories we cover — certified, clinically tested, third-party verified — are checkable, and almost nobody checks them. Our method is to take each claim to the register that would actually contain it, and to record what is there.

• Find the issuing register. A certification claim points at a certifier. We go to that certifier’s own public register rather than to the brand’s description of it.
• Check it is the right register, not just the right certifier. Certifiers often run more than one, and they are not interchangeable. A body may keep a directory of the companies it works with and a separate directory of the finished products it has certified — and a brand can be absent from the first while holding a dozen entries in the second. We have come close to publishing that mistake twice. Before recording that something is not listed, we establish that the register we searched is the one that would actually contain it.
• Run controls first. Before recording any result we search for something we expect to find, to establish that the register works and that it covers the Indian market. A blank result only means something once we know the search itself works.
• Capture with provenance. Every check is saved as a dated screenshot with its source URL and the date of the check burned into the image, so the evidence travels with the claim rather than depending on our description of it.
• Report the scope. A certificate covers named products and named batches. We say which products it covers and which it does not, because a certificate that covers a brand’s isolate but not the tub you are holding is technically true and practically useless. Scope has two halves and both matter: which products a certificate covers, and which standard it was granted under, since some schemes have more than one tier and a product certified to the lower tier is not certified to the higher one. We name both, because collapsing them is the easiest way to overstate a certificate without saying anything untrue.

Different categories have different registers, so the list below grows as we cover more ground. All of them are free, public and searchable, and every check we publish can be repeated by anyone reading it. Where a check has a date, that date is in the article, not here.

Supplements and protein. Labdoor · Trustified · LGC’s Informed Choice programme · the Clinical Trials Registry – India, searched through the WHO ICTRP portal which mirrors it · the United States patent record.

Cosmetics and fragrance. The COSMOS certified products directory, which lists finished cosmetics certified to the COSMOS ORGANIC and COSMOS NATURAL standards · Ecocert’s directory of certified customers, which is a different register from the one above and lists companies rather than finished products · PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies · Cruelty Free International’s approved brands · the Leaping Bunny shopping guide, whose standard is open only to companies based in the US and Canada, so absence from it means nothing for an Indian brand · the Government of India’s Geographical Indications register.

Across categories. Where a claim points at a regulator rather than a certifier, we go to the regulator’s own published position on what it does. For cosmetics sold in India that means the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules and the CDSCO — which, as it turns out, maintains no public register of approved cosmetic products at all.

“None named” is not the same as “we found nothing”

Where a brand does not name a certifying body anywhere in its own marketing, we record that as none named, and we mean exactly that: a statement about what the brand publishes, not a finding that we searched a register and the product was absent. The two are different, and conflating them would be unfair to the brand and misleading to you.

Sometimes the certificate does not exist

There is a third possibility, and it is the one readers find most surprising: the organisation named on the packaging does not issue that kind of certificate at all.

It is worth knowing that this is a real category, because it cannot be resolved by searching harder. Where we find it, we quote the organisation’s own published description of what it does and does not do, and link to it, so the point rests on the certifier’s own words rather than on ours. It is also the safest kind of finding we publish, because it says nothing about any particular brand’s conduct — only about what the named body actually offers.

How we compare products

Where a category allows arithmetic, we do the arithmetic rather than repeating a marketing line.

• Like for like. We compare the same pack size against the same pack size. Setting a bulk tub against a small one flatters whichever is bigger and tells you nothing.
• From the label, not the pitch. Where a pack prints the two numbers that matter, we use them and show the working, so you can check it yourself with the tub in front of you.
• Cost per unit of the thing you are buying, not cost per package. The cheaper container is frequently not the better value, and that gap is usually where the useful finding is.
• Customer feedback read carefully. Where several comparable products could fill the same recommendation, we look at rating and review count together. A high average across very few reviews is weak evidence, not strong evidence.

What we will not print

• Testing we did not do. We do not describe tasting, using or testing a product we have not tasted, used or tested. Where an article reaches the limit of what we can honestly say, it says so in the article.
• Invented people. No fabricated authors, credentials, qualifications or photographs. Everyone named on this site is real.
• Bare exact prices. Prices move constantly and a precise figure is stale within days, so we publish ranges or clearly approximate figures and let live pricing show the current number.
• Marketplace star ratings and review counts as headline figures. They are platform data, not our finding, and they move for reasons that have nothing to do with the product.

Who writes and who reviews

Martin M. does the product research, the register checks and the label arithmetic behind our comparisons.

Victoria M is the founder of Naatural.in. She sets editorial direction and reviews product recommendations before publication.

How we make money

When we get it wrong

We correct in the open. Where a published article turns out to be wrong, the correction is printed on the page itself, saying what was wrong and why, rather than the error being quietly edited away. An article that has been corrected is more trustworthy than one that never admits to anything, not less.

If you believe something here is wrong or out of date — particularly a certification claim — tell us and send the certificate or registration number, and we will re-check it and publish the result.