Over 10,000 Chemicals Banned in Europe Are Still Legal in Your Supplements Here
A former chemical industry insider breaks down the regulatory gap — and what conscious consumers can do about it.
Most of us assume that if something is on a store shelf, it's been vetted. Tested. Safe.
That assumption is worth questioning.
Ali, the founder of TheCheekyClean recently appeared on FOX 8's New Day Cleveland to talk about exactly this — and the number she dropped mid-segment is one that's hard to shake:
The European Union has banned or restricted over 10,000 chemicals that are still legally allowed in consumer products in the United States. The U.S. currently bans just 11 cosmetic ingredients.
Eleven.
A Chemical Insider Who Started Asking Different Questions
TheCheekyClean wasn't founded by a lifelong wellness blogger. It was founded by someone who spent 13 years working inside the chemical industry, managing large chemical companies and learning firsthand how regulation — and the lack of it — shapes what ends up in the products you buy.
When both of her parents became ill with cancer while she was building her career in that same industry, the questions became impossible to ignore. She tested for the BRCA gene (negative), and began channeling everything she was learning behind the scenes into a new mission: live better, and help others have a different outcome.
That mission became TheCheekyClean — and eventually, Conscious Cart.
What "Consciously Choosing" Actually Means
We talk a lot about "clean" products in wellness culture. But what does clean actually mean when the regulatory bar is this low?
For TheCheekyClean and Conscious Cart, it means holding products to a higher standard — one closer to EU guidelines than US minimums. It means looking at every ingredient with the question: would this be allowed in Europe?
It also means transparency about sourcing. TheCheekyClean's flagship collagen supplement, for example, uses 5 types of collagen from pasture-raised, grass-fed, and wild-caught sources — because the quality of the source matters as much as the ingredient itself.
This is what consciously choosing looks like in practice.
Why Supplements Are Especially Under-Regulated
Supplements occupy a murky middle ground in the regulatory landscape. They don't go through the same pre-market approval process as pharmaceuticals, which means what's on the label — and how well the product is formulated — varies enormously between brands.
Two things that most collagen supplements get wrong:
Sourcing — many use low-quality, mixed, or untraceable animal sources
Bioavailability — collagen without co-factors like Vitamin C and silica can't be properly absorbed by the body. Most formulas don't include them.
The result? Millions of people taking supplements daily that aren't properly formulated to actually work — and no way to know the difference from the packaging alone.
What Conscious Cart Is Here to Do
This is exactly the problem Conscious Cart is built to solve.
Conscious Cart is a curated clean consumer marketplace — a place to discover and shop for products that have already been vetted against higher standards. Products that are designed to help you reduce your toxic load, not add to it.
Think of it as the filter between you and the overwhelming supplement and wellness market. We do the sourcing work so you don't have to start from scratch every time you need to restock.
TheCheekyClean Collagen is one of the first products featured — and the multivitamin is coming next.
Where to Start
If you're new to conscious consumerism, the learning curve can feel steep. You don't have to overhaul everything at once.
Start with what you're putting inside your body — because that's where the regulatory gaps are most consequential and least visible. Collagen is an easy, practical starting point: it's a supplement most people already take (or want to take), and upgrading to a consciously sourced, properly formulated version is a direct, tangible win.
From there, the goal is simple: make one better swap at a time.
The Bigger Picture
What happened on FOX 8 Cleveland wasn't just a product segment. It was a conversation about who gets to decide what's safe — and whether we're willing to accept the status quo.
The answer, increasingly, is no.
Conscious Cart exists because consumers deserve better information, better products, and a marketplace that actually holds itself accountable. We're here to help you build that.
Shop Collagen + other consciously sourced products → Conscious Cart
Follow TheCheekyClean on Instagram → @thecheekyclean
Listen to the RAW Podcast → Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
As seen on FOX 8 News Cleveland's New Day Cleveland, March 2026.
