At Bend Beauty, we want to encourage our consumers to choose products that are effective and safe. This means we want you to choose products that do what they say they will do.
Today’s supplement market is full of products that make incredible claims, particularly in relation to beauty and wellness. While it would be wonderful if every product lived up to its marketing claims, unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. For this reason, we want to share a helpful tip with you that will help you discern whether a product is making claims outside its actual intended use – in Canada, this involves looking up their Natural Product Number (NPN).
What is an NPN?
According to Health Canada, the Licensed Natural Health Products Database contains information about natural health products that have been issued a product license by Health Canada.
Products with a license have been assessed by Health Canada and found to be safe, effective and of high quality when used according to their recommended conditions of use. You can identify licensed natural health products by looking for the eight-digit NPN on the label. Once you find the NPN on the label, you can use the Licensed Natural Health Products Database to look it up and see what uses the product is authorized for by Health Canada.
How to Look up an NPN:
- Locate the NPN on the bottle – for example, on Bend Beauty Renew + Protect, it’s located here
- Visit this link to look up the NPN in the database
- Search the database by entering the NPN
- Click on the number once it appears
- Make note of the “Recommended Use or Purpose” to see what the product is Health Canada Authorized to claim
For example, here is a screenshot of what appears in this section when you look up Renew + Protect:
In summary, the Licensed Natural Health Products database is a handy tool that will allow you to look up the authorized recommended uses for natural health products in Canada. This is a helpful way to see if brands are making claims outside of the authorized uses for their products. Have questions? Reach out to us here.