Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint vs. 365 Herbal Mint smackdown
It’s a mint wrestling match with my scalp as the wrestling mat. Dr. Bronner’s Magic 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure Castile Soap on one side; 365 Herbal Mint Shampoo for Normal and Oily Hair, from Whole Foods, on the other.
Both are cheap and reasonably minty smelling and feeling.
Dr. Bronner’s, of course, wins for packaging design. Hippies on speed flung about 100 typewriters onto this bottle, and anyone who has used Dr. Bronner’s anything has probably read the entertaining ravings and helpful tips about how to use the soap (DILUTED!) for douches, baby care, floor polishing, and tofu marinades.
I confess - I never, ever, dilute the stuff to put it on my body. It’s nice and minty and tingly, undiluted.
I tend to use it to wash and shampoo the sides of my head, especially right behind my ears. Since my hair is super short and stubbly right there, the harshness of the soap doesn’t damage my hair. Mmmm, minty!
In the bath itself, a bunch of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap is always relaxing and de-stressing. It has an extreme edge of mintiness. It’s cheap and strong enough that I can get a really overpowering minty smell. Yet another bath that clears the sinuses!
365 Herbal Mint is a nice shampoo, not harsh like Dr. Bronner’s, in fact, very gentle while still being refreshing to my kind of greasy dandruffy scalp. The label informs me that it is “specially formulated with 100% natural essential oils”. Its prose goes on boringly about how it has no parabins. Okay… no parabins. Tell me what you have, 365! They have stimulation and invigoration. That’s good. I’d say that the Fanciness Quotient (FQ) is low on this product. Rather hilariously its top ingredient is… wait for it…:
Aqua (Water)
Yes! Somehow Whole Foods has found a way to make even water into something pretentious!
Then the ingredients go on to list all the usual shampoo chemicals like Cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium Laureth sulfate, and so on. The *oils* are all natural. But the stuff in the rest of the shampoo isn’t.
Since I don’t really care if things are all natural, I don’t care. It’s a good everyday shampoo!
Dr. Bronner’s wins for bath fanciness, for being all around useful, and for being strong and minty-tingly when you smear it around undiluted on your body. 365 wins for use as an actual shampoo.
Another great use for Dr. Bronner’s: put some diluted in a spray bottle and use it to mist the air so that your bathroom smells nice. It is also excellent undiluted for killing ants. I pour it straight into the cracks in the bathroom tile where ants come up, and they go away for days.
For travelling there is nothing like Dr. Bronner’s. A small bottle of it costs about 3 dollars, and at the end of a long day on a plane, or hiking, or having to go shopping with one’s mother in law, it’s heavenly to pour this stuff into a refreshing and relaxing tub of near-boiling hot water. After a good scalding in this stuff I emerge red as a lobster. A very minty, happy lobster.
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