As the clean-living industry swells to unprecedented prevalence, the link between gut health and the way we look is becoming increasingly clear.
This association is intrinsic to The Beauty Chef, an Australian beauty label that counts Naomi Watts among its devotees, and that’s all about looking at what’s inside for results on the outside. The range of powders and elixirs was founded in Sydney by ex-beauty editor Carla Oates in 2009.
The idea for The Beauty Chef stems back to when Oates suffered from allergies and eczema as a child and teenager, which led her to eliminate gluten and dairy from her diet. “The effect this had on my skin was profound and from there I understood the link between what you put in your body and good health,” she says.
“The skin is often a great barometer for what’s going on inside the gut,” Oates continues. “Did you know that people with acne and rosacea are 10 times more likely to have gut issues?”
Years later, when her own daughter Jeet suffered from similar skin troubles, Oates put the whole family on what she calls a “gut-healing protocol”, meaning a diet rich in wholefoods and lacto-fermented ingredients, similar to those found in kombucha.
“Friends and family started asking me what I was doing differently and why I looked so ‘glowy’, and from there I began to really understand the power of the gut-skin connection,” says Oates.
A self-described “nerd” who says she stays up late researching the therapeutic benefits of plants and herbs, Oates began experimenting with different ingredients in her kitchen at home. She says she soon became “Bondi’s local friendly bacteria supplier and pusher of lacto-fermented foods”, and after some encouraging feedback and the aid of naturopath Alison Cassar, she launched Glow Inner Beauty Powder in Bondi in 2009.
“In the early days I had no budget for marketing and PR, so I really relied on the power of word of mouth,” she says.
But it was essentially her work as a beauty editor for Sunday Life Magazine that sparked The Beauty Chef. Inundated with freebies and samples, coupled with her own research, Oates became aware of the amount of toxic chemicals in a lot of mainstream skincare and cosmetics products.
“With women often writing in for advice relating to beauty woes, I felt a responsibility to educate,” she says. “The clear-skinned radiance they were looking for could actually be achieved with a more holistic inside-out approach.
“[I was] constantly reminded of the one-dimensional standards of what it meant to be beautiful,” Oates says of her days in media. “To be part of the paradigm shift towards a much healthier, broader perception of beauty is incredibly satisfying.”
The Beauty Chef now sells a range of probiotic powders and supplements designed to promote general wellbeing and the outward glow of good health. Although no scientific studies have been conducted to prove their effectiveness, the products’ commercial success and positive reviews on social media show that, anecdotally at least, people notice a difference in their wellbeing and skin health after using them.
The Collagen Inner Beauty Boost elixir is a concentrated blend of certified-organic maqui berry, acai, papaya, blueberry, goji berry and pomegranate powders with grape seed extract, zinc and vitamin C. (Macqui berry contain anthocyanins, an antioxidant reported to have a range of health benefits, though the research isn’t conclusive.) It was recently awarded the “Anti-Aging Skin Essential” in the Jones Beauty Awards by retailer David Jones.
The Glow Powder – which is a combination of 20 organic ingredients including maqui berry, dunaliella salina, queen garnet plum, zinc and vitamin C – has quickly become an Instagram favourite. But Oates says when she first launched the product in 2009, everyone around her was sceptical. “People said, “This is really weird, I don’t think this is going to work’,” she says. It’s now her best-selling product.
The Beauty Chef now has a team of 30 full-time staff (including her son Otis, who has just started part-time) at its Double Bay headquarters, 11 products, two books (The Beauty Chef Cookbook and The Beauty Chef Gut Guide), and customers in the US, UK, NZ, Hong Kong and Canada.
But Oates still wears many hats in the business – she’s the CEO, creative director, copywriter and product developer.
Oates’s belief in what she calls the “gut-skin axis” has prompted The Beauty Chef to partner with Sydney University’s Charles Perkins Centre, where the brand is sponsoring a PhD investigation into the bioactivity of fermented foods and the effects they may have on skin and gut health.
The Beauty Chef has also expanded into outer beauty, with the recent addition of topical skincare designed to complement your “inner-beauty routine”. This includes the multi-tasking Flora Fix Balm, which is enriched with bio-fermented young coconut extract, camellia-seed oil and The Beauty Chef’s trademark Flora Culture (14 species of bacteria and beneficial yeasts).
Oates’s focus this year is to continue educating customers on the importance of gut health while continuing to broaden the topical offering, “I’ve been working on skincare for years, but as a perfectionist, it takes me a long time. The product has to be clean, highly active and perform seamlessly before I’m happy to take it to market,” she says.
This article first appeared on Broadsheet on August 6, 2019. Some details may have changed since publication.
