This post should have been written a long time ago. But it wasn’t. One reason being that I’ve found it incredibly difficult to find the brain space and time to write much at all since having three little ones five and under (as is clearly evidenced by the fact that the last post here was written over a year and a half ago!). But the main reason is that I’ve been really conflicted on how to go about writing this post. I don’t want to cast a bad light on a company that I still dearly love and use often, but at the same time, the information I presented and recommendations I made when I first wrote this series a couple years ago has changed. And considering that this series still gets some traffic and people reading it, I felt it was necessary to do a follow-up.
In short, I no longer recommend Beeyoutiful essential oils as a great option for those wanting to get into using essential oils. It’s not that I think they’re horrible oils, or that I no longer support Beeyoutiful as a company. I fully support Beeyoutiful as a natural supplement company and still order quite a bit from them (we use their Miracle Salve almost daily!). However, I don’t think they’re the best option for essential oils, and have found several that I think are better.
Several years ago, when I first started researching and using essential oils, there were two options that I knew of: essential oils from the popular multi-level marketing companies, Young Living and doTerra, or those purchased from health food stores. I didn’t want to buy from the MLMs as I thought their oils were incredibly over-priced, and even with the little research I had done up to that point, I recognized that the majority of their usage recommendations were unsafe (using them undiluted/neat and taking them internally without the supervision of an aromatherapist). Even though I knew I wasn’t required to use the oils as they recommended, I couldn’t, in good conscience, support companies who made such recommendations just to get people to buy more of their products. I didn’t really want to buy the majority of the essential oils offered in health food stores as most of the ones I had seen up to that point didn’t seem like they were very good quality (i.e. there was a lack of basic information about the oil on the bottle, all the oils were priced the same regardless of type, etc.). At the time, Beeyoutiful seemed like the great third option: they weren’t over-priced and the company was very conservative in their usage recommendations, but from what I had researched about essential oils so far, they still seemed like quality oils.
As I talked about when I first wrote the Simple Essential Oils series, I used Beeyoutiful oils for several years and was very happy with them. I had a basic collection and I was slowly figuring out how to safely use the oils for different ailments my family came up against, and how to effectively use them to replace conventional cleaners and the like. However, in the last two years, I’ve been researching essential oils a lot more and a whole new world has opened before me! I discovered that there were a lot of others out there like me who were striving to learn more about essential oils, but didn’t want that to involve the MLM companies. And through these others, I found out that there’s quite a few essential oil companies that sell quality oils for a reasonable price. I was so excited about all the options that I now knew about!
The more I researched though, I discovered several signs that made me wonder if Beeyoutiful oils were as great as I thought they were. They failed to supply some information about the oil that I was learning was very important — things like where the plant was grown and what part of the plant the oil was extracted from. Also, the more I read about aromatherapy and discussed things with certified aromatherapists, I started to wonder how much Beeyoutiful actually know about aromatherapy. Not that they were trying to pass themselves off as something they weren’t, but essential oils are just a small part of their company, and therefore they couldn’t make aromatherapy their focus.
Along with those wonderings, I started to become concerned about some of the usage recommendations that I was seeing from Beeyoutiful regarding different ways to use their essential oils. Now that I had a much better grasp on the safety considerations that come with delving into aromatherapy, practices and recommendations that I had originally taken at face value raised some red flags for me. Things like not mentioning when an oil would be unsafe to use around young children (this article has a lot of good information about that), and recommending dilutions that were much higher than they ought to be. Seeing these tendencies in the recommendations made by the company made me feel that I could no longer recommend them as a source to others beginning their journey into using essential oils.
But all is definitely not lost — there are several other options out there to use as essential oils suppliers without having to get caught up in the over-priced and dangerously-marketed MLMs.
My top favourite supplier is definitely Plant Therapy. They are an amazing company and I have yet to hear anything bad about them (which, if you’ve read much online about essential oils, is pretty rare!). Their oils are great quality and very reasonably-priced (with free shipping on every order!). My favourite aspect of their company though, is their focus on essential oil safety. There are no crazy recommendations specific to their company just to get you to use up your oils faster so you can buy more. All their recommendations follow basic guidelines recognized in the global aromatherapy world. Plant Therapy even teamed up with Robert Tisserand, the world-renowned expert on essential oil safety, to develop their line of KidSafe blends, specifically made with oils that are safe to use with young children. As a mama to little ones, this was huge for me! I could go on about the company, but suffice to say: I highly recommend Plant Therapy to anyone looking to get started in essential oils.
While Plant Therapy is my go-to, I have also been very happy with Florihana essential oils. They’re a small company in France, and make great quality oils, but with international shipping and all, ordering directly from them can be pretty expensive. As such, I’ve ordered all of my Florihana essential oils through Tropical Traditions. I’ve been very happy with the oils themselves, but Tropical Tradtions’ stock seems to fluctuate significantly so I’ve only purchased from them a handful of times.
Well, I guess that covers most of what has been mulling around in my brain about this post for the past year or so. I hope to do (another!) follow-up post sometime in the near future with links to different websites and books that have been helpful to me as I’ve continued to learn more and more about using essential oils in my family. I definitely don’t know everything about the topic (not even close!), but if you have any questions, I’d be happy to share what I’ve learned.