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Should You Try Huggies Natural Care Wipes?
Huggies is a major player in the realm of baby care, but they haven’t necessarily had the best track record when it comes to avoiding potentially dangerous chemicals in their baby products. Despite this history, however, they have started selling several items over the years that aim to be more natural, safe, and gentle for babies. Today, we’ll be checking out the Huggies Natural Care baby wipes to see how they stack up against the competition within a variety of factors. Most importantly, we’ll check out the Huggies Natural Care wipes ingredients to see if they can be considered chemical free baby wipes.
Price: Not quite $.03 per wipe for 3, 176-count refill packs at Amazon
Pros: Good price compared to other ‘natural’ products
Cons: Durability of the wipes isn’t the best.
Overall Score: 80 out of 100
Chemical Safety
When it comes to chemical safety, Huggies is making a strong attempt to offer products that include fewer chemicals that could be potentially dangerous to babies. The Huggies Natural Care wipes aim to be hypoallergenic and free of parabens, fragances, and alcohol. Like many of their competitors, they are also adding the ‘99% water’ tag to their advertising, emphasizing a safer product.
With that being said, the Huggies Natural Care wipes have a very safe list of ingredients, overall. If you look below, you’ll see the complete list.
You’ll note that the list doesn’t contain many hard-to-pronounce chemicals and there are a couple of naturally-derived goodies in there as well!
There is nothing on the list that is included on my list of common baby wipes ingredients to avoid which is a good sign and echoes Huggies’ commitment to avoiding harsh chemicals in their products. Of the list, only four ingredients raise any red flags and they are relatively mild:
- Malic Acid – It might sound scary, but malic acid is found in apples and is normally added to cosmetic products to help balance the pH in a product to better match human skin. In this case, it is generally quite safe. It is possible, however, that babies with sensitive skin could have a problem with irritation caused by malic acid.
- Butoxy PEG-4 PG-Amodimethicone – This is the scariest looking chemical in the bunch and it’s been deemed safe for use in cosmetic products. While there is a very very slight possibility that your baby could become irritated from this ingredient, it’s unlikely. The addition of PEG-4 is to help make the wipe slide more easily on the skin. There is some contamination concern with ethylene oxide, a potentially very dangerous chemical, as it is part of the production process for this chemical.
- Sodium Benzoate – This is another preservative that is commonly found in foods and cosmetic products, especially cooked or raw seafood. It is synthesized from benzoic acid, which is naturally found in some spices and fruits, and sodium hydroxide. Aside from rare complications, it has been deemed safe to use in small quantities (less than .1% by weight). There have been some studies that have shown it to be slightly more dangerous when it is added to foods stored inside metal cans, but there is no issue with that here in these baby wipes.
- Tocopheryl Acetate – You probably know this chemical by its common name, Vitamin E. In fact, vitamin E oils are usually composed of 100% tocopheryl acetate. In studies, this ingredient is thought to be completely safe and has even shown to be antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic in most applications. Toxicity is rare and requires extremely large doses.
We rated these Huggies Natural Care wipes an 80 in the chemical safety category.
I generally do an inverse scoring to EWG’s chemical safety rating which in this case was a 2 out of 10.
Comfort and Irritation
The Huggies Natural Care wipes aim to be extremely gentle on your baby’s skin. With the pH-balancing ingredient Malic Acid, alongside Coco-glucoside (derived from coconut oil), these wipes should be irritation free and mildly moisturizing. The lack of alcohol means there shouldn’t be any stinging for the overwhelming majority of users.
We rated these Huggies Natural Care wipes a 90 in this category due to their overall strong performance.
Remember that some little babies may have overly sensitive skin or allergic reactions to certain ingredients, so your mileage may vary.
Durability and Packaging
The packing for this item is a pretty standard plastic bag-style pouch with a cover that flips open so that you can reach inside for the wipes. These wipes are ‘folded in’ which means that pulling one wipe out will pull the next one up into the opening for easy access next time.
As for the wipes themselves, they are made of pulp mixed with a little polypropylene that I found to be pretty bad in comparison with other wipe brands. In fact, I found myself pulling out other wipe brands to see if I was just imagining how weak they held up. They are very prone to tearing and don’t stretch well at all.
Are huggies natural care wipes flushable? No, these are NOT flushable!
Overall, we rate these baby wipes a 50 in this category due to their solid packaging but dinged them heavily for the tearing so easily.
Of course, you’ll normally be using these wipes to clean up a mess by rubbing them back and forth on a baby’s bottom – something that isn’t likely to tear a wipe under normal circumstances. Still, if you are trying to clean up a mess that makes it way to carpet or fabric, these wipes aren’t likely to last long.
Fragrance
Like most natural baby wipe products, the Huggies Natural Care wipes are actually fragrance-free. As such, I’m not going to ding the wipes for not smelling like sweet roses or a fruit cocktail, but they can’t smell like what I’m about to wipe up with them either!
Personally, I think Huggies did a good job with their ‘fragrance-free’ fragrance and I really don’t get much scent at all when I sniff them. If anything, they just smell a little like wet paper with maybe, just maybe, the tinest bit of leftover coconut oil wafted onto them.
I’m personally rating the Huggies Natural Care wipes a 90 in this category, but your mileage may vary on the fragrance-free ‘fragrance.’
Price and Value
Huggies Natural Care wipes are actually priced pretty cheaply considering the fact that they are a more natural product. A lof of the safer, more natural products are being produced by smaller companies that just can’t compete with the scale that these big manufacturers enjoy. As such, you are likely to find these priced better than their competitors and offer a broader range of pack selection (pop tops, refill packs, cases, etc)
To figure out whether or not Huggies Natural Care wipes are expensive I will compare the per-wipe price to the cheapest option available on Amazon, the Amazon Elements baby wipes flip-top packs.
As of the time of this writing we have:
- Amazon Elements going for $.02 per wipe
- Huggies Natural Care wipes going for not-quite $.03 per wipe
With that comparison, I’m giving these wipes an 90 in this category.
This brand is still more expensive than the Amazon Basics brand, but don’t forget that those wipes aren’t making as much effort to provide a safe and gentle option for your little baby’s backside, either. At not even $.01 more per wipe, these are a great deal.
If you are interested in how much baby wipes are likely to cost you on average for the month or year, check out my resource here!
Overall Huggies Natural Care Wipes Score and Impression
There are a lot of really great things going for the Huggies Natural Care face and hand wipes and they seem to be a solid choice for anyone looking for organic baby wipes or all-natural baby wipes to help protect their little one from harsher chemicals. There is still a chance that your baby will have a bad reaction to some of the natural ingredients, but these are generally very safe baby wipes that you shouldn’t have to worry about.
Averaging our scores together gives us an overall score of 80 for this baby wipe review with the easy tearing making the biggest impact on the total.
If you don’t care much about durability or don’t find yourself cleaning up messes that aren’t on a baby’s bottom then you can get a safe wipe for a great price.
Top Online Huggies Natural Care Review Likes and Dislikes
My review has included my personal experience and what I consider important in a product. Of course, other people that have purchased the product have had other things to say, so I’ll highlight the most common likes and dislikes that I saw in online reviews.
Overall, this product was rated 4.5 stars out of 5 on Amazon as of the time of this writing with over 1,600 reviewers weighing in.
Likes
- Value – Nearly all positive reviewers mentioned that these wipes are a great value for the price.
- Packaging options – Many reviewers noted that because they were available in small ‘togo’ packs all the way up to huge refill packs, there was a lot of flexibility depending on planned use.
- Gentle – Most reviewers felt like these wipes were great for their babies that were prone to diaper rash or otherwise had sensitive skin. A lack of alcohol was mentioned frequently.
Dislikes
- Several reviewers noted that their wipes were either drier than normal out of the package or that the giant refill bags forced you to have a plan to use/store the wipes so they didn’t dry out to quickly.
- A couple of reviewers mentioned issues with irritation.
- A couple of reviewers didn’t like the ‘fragrance-free’ fragrance.
