Cleansing foams for sensitive skin: review and comparison of Skinfood and Primera cleansing foams

Today I'd like to talk about two new cleansing foams that I've been trying out recently - Skinfood Broccoli Cleansing Foam and Primera Watercress Brightening Cleansing Foam (it's listed as Cresswhite Brightening Cleansing Foam on some websites, must be some kind of translation issue).  Both cleansers are from Korean skincare brands that are known for their plant-based products that are sensitive skin-friendly. When I picked those two among other plant-based foams, I was looking for something that might have vitamin C in it; recently I added a few vitamin C products to my skincare regimen and I've been having good results. Ideally I'd like to find a mild plant-based foam cleanser rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants that will prep my skin for the next products.

Skinfood Broccoli Cleansing Foam vs Primera Watercress Brightening Cleansing Foam. Neither produces a lot of foam.

To start with, let me explain why I believe a correct cleanser is one of the most important steps in my skincare. My skin is both sensitive and reactive, and I'm still struggling with remnants of rosacea; any kind of harsh cleanser makes my skin red and itchy, and it'll stay mad at the world for a long while. However, I do have to cleanse thoroughly - I have very oily skin and I live in NY that is famous for its polluted air. Just walking around the city for a couple hours on a hot day or commuting to work and back home leaves me with dull, congested, stressed and aggravated skin; first thing I want to do when I get home after work is to clean it all off and let my skin breathe. For a long while I was using regular oil-free foam cleansers that left my skin squeaky clean and stripped out of all oil, but I never had any  positive long-term results from over-cleansing, and my skin's sebum production was out of control. A few years ago I switched to low pH mild cleansers, and I've noticed some immediate positive results. There is a lot of research on normal range of pH of healthy skin and how changing skin's pH affects it, you can find articles on PubMed (such as here, here, here, or in this  beautiful research performed on volunteers with sensitive and problematic skin) and in full-text research articles available online, such as this one that you can read if you're interested in more scientific explanation. 

My criteria of a good cleansing foam are rather straightforward. It should 

• have pH of 7 or lower; pH 5.5 is optimal for me;
• have no mineral oil, parabens and artificial fragrances and dyes
• have no ingredients that I'm allergic to, such as gluten, honey etc, since there is a good chance that they'll stay on my lips and eventually get digested
• leave my skin clean, but not dehydrated

With that in mind, lets talk about those two products that I've been trying out recently.

Skinfood Broccoli Cleansing Foam is not a newly released product, but I haven't tried it before. The brand is being marketed as all-natural and many of Skinfood products are 10-free. The official website mentions that the whole Broccoli line was formulated for sensitive skin without mentioning any details; you can check out the full list of ingredients on CosDNA here. You can find it on Amazon for around $10 with Prime free shipping. Strait out of the tube it looks like this:

Skinfood Broccoli Cleansing Foam

As you can see, it has pH between 5 and 6, but closer to pH6; it's white in color and it has rich, creamy texture. It has stearic, lauric and myristic acid that are known acne irritants (those are the only offenders on the ingredients list); despite that it didn't break me out. It has broccoli sprout extract listed as first ingredient, and its marketing spiel states that it has over 40% by volume of broccoli sprout extracts and over 90% of naturally derived ingredients. Broccoli is rich in anti-oxidants and vitamins and is a natural source of vitamin C, among many others. There is considerable research on effects of sulforaphane, an isothiocyanate naturally occurring in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, on certain cancers (such as this article or this review). It seemed like a solid choice of a plant-based cleanser, on paper at least. Plus, I do happen to like broccoli!

It's powerful enough to leave my skin feeling clean and fresh, even though it does not lather well; however, most low-pH cleansers that I've tried were also low-foam. It smells like some kind of fresh green salad or something of the sort, but the smell does not linger. I never had any skin redness or other issues after using it. I have to say that it was a little bit drying; if I waited for more than a minute before putting my toner on, my skin felt slightly uncomfortable. I think it will be a good second cleanser for hot summer weather, when my sebum production is at its highest, but it's definitely too much for me to use it in the mornings or anytime in colder weather.

Pros: clean ingredients; low pH; mild enough for sensitive skin; budget-friendly, easy to purchase with fast shipping time; nice fresh smell.

Cons: it's a bit too drying even for my oily skin; will not work out for people with dry skin.

Overall: I'm not disappointed with it. I think it's a good cleanser, and I appreciate it's clean ingredients list and high amounts of plant extracts. However, I'm not going to repurchase it when it runs out or expires; I'd rather try some other Skinfood foam cleanser. White Dandelion Gel foam (this one) or Beauty in a Food Black Bean Foam (this one) might be milder than Broccoli Foam and therefore better choices for me. 8/10

I picked Primera Watercress Brightening Cleansing Foam because somehow I never tried anything from this brand, and a basic product is always a good starting point for me. Primera is an eco-friendly Korean brand that belongs to Amore Pacific corporation; their website is easy to navigate, and I like that they have full lists of ingredients for their products. It's a bit more expensive than Skinfood Broccoli Foam; Amazon lists it for around $30 without Prime shipping, but you can find it on eBay for about $20 full size or $6 for travel size with free shipping from Korea (so the shipping time will be longer than Skinfood's). It has light, creamy texture; it's pH is between 6 and 7, but closer to 7.

Primera Watercress Brightening Cleansing Foam

It was hard to take a good picture of it, since I don't have a macro lens on my camera;  it's semi-opaque and pearl-colored, with tiny blue spheres that dissolve when you start lathering it up. Supposedly the spheres isolate some of the ingredients from the main mixture to preserve them and keep them fresh until the actual application; I'm not sure about details as, unfortunately, there is nothing about it on Primera website. Its ingredient list is much longer than Broccoli Foam's one, and if you look it up on CosDNA here, you'll see that it has stearic, lauric and myristic acid as well; water is listed as first ingredient, unlike in Broccoli Foam, that has plant extracts instead of water. Unlike Broccoli Foam, it has alcohol and cetyl alcohol, and a whole bunch of PEGs; I did not expect it from a brand that praises itself for being eco-friendly and all-natural. The featured plant ingredient in it is watercress, that is supposedly great for the skin, and has anti-oxidants and vitamins on par with broccoli. I would imagine that the concentration of watercress extract is much lower than 40%; it's listed 9th, well outside of top 5 ingredients, which means it might be as low as 1%. There is a lot of other plant extracts on the list, such as japanese apricot, lady's mantle, yarrow, and peppermint, all listed outside of top 5 ingredients. It has niacinamide, which is a good brightening and anti-inflammatory ingredient. However, niacinamide reacts with vitamin C, so if there is any naturally occurring vitamin C in watercress or other plants' extracts, it and niacinamide might just cancel out each other's effects; perhaps that's why some of foam's ingredients are encapsulated and kept separate. It's all guesswork on my part, mind you.

I did not get any adverse reactions after using this foam on consecutive days, despite all the potential triggers it has, and it did not dry out my skin. I can't say I'm a big fan of it, but it's decent, no-frills choice of a cleanser. I tried using it both in AM and PM, and while it's a good second cleanser to use for double cleanse in the evening, I prefer my Su:m 37 Miracle Rose Cleanser for the morning cleanse. I did not notice any brightening effect after using it, but considering that it's just a cleansing foam and it stays on my skin for only a few minutes, I'm fine with it. Because it's Amore Pacific product with quite a few plant extracts in it, I expected it to have that standard hanbang smell (not that I mind it); I was wrong, it smells like freshly cut lemons. It has lemon peel oil, bergamot fruit oil and lavender oils added as natural fragrances, and it seems that the lemon oil overpowers everything else. 

Pros: mild and non-drying; did not break me out; nice smell; cleanses well

Cons: too many irritants on ingredient list; the amount of plant extract is too low for a brand that it supposedly all plant-based; average performance does not justify higher price; long shipping time; pH7 is higher than I would usually go for.

Overall: I'm not impressed; I did expect better results after seeing so many positive reviews of various Primera products, including this foam, on reddit and some blogs, but again, YMMV and it's possible that it works better for some people than it did for me. I'm not going to repurchase. 6/10

Final thoughts: I can't pick a clear winner between those two foams, since neither worked out for me the way I expected it to, but overall I like Skinfood cleanser better. It was interesting to try some new skincare brands; I don't see myself repurchasing either of those two cleansers, but I will definitely try some other products from Skinfood. Currently I'm testing out Manyo Factory cleansing oils and foams (I got several of them in travel-size sets to see for myself why they're so hyped up on Instagram/blogosphere), plus a couple of SoNatural cleansing foams, so neither Primera nor Skinfood foams will see much use in the next few weeks; but I like them well enough to come back to them eventually.