The new app that claims to tell you how toxic your make-up is – including Charlotte Tilbury's best-selling nude lipstick The Yuka app is the global sensation that promises to tell you, in an instant, how healthy your cosmetics are. But can you take it as gospel? Alice Robertson scans her favourites to find out By Alice Robertson For You Magazine Published: 12:01, 8 June 2024 | Updated: 12:01, 8 June 2024 e-mail View comments Monday morning, and I’ve just finished applying my Charlotte Tilbury nude lipstick before scanning its barcode using the Yuka app, my new beauty obsession. My phone flashes an amber warning.
No! Do I really need to cut this out of my make-up bag? (See the review, below, to find out.) Yuka is a French-owned free app, launched in 2017, that reveals what five million food and cosmetics products contain, and what that might mean for your health. A score out of 100 is given, along with a colour-coded rating: dark green for excellent; bright green for good; orange for poor; red for bad.
A list of ingredients, colour-coded for risk, is also shown, revealing possible health or environmental issues, with scientific sources to back them up and a suggested alternative if your product scores badly. The app didn’t like the mineral oils and titanium dioxide in my Charlotte Tilbury lipstick – and suggested a Dior alternative. With 50 million users across 12 countries, Yuka is so influential that the French supermarket chain Intermarché changed 900 of its food .
