How Do You Judge Quality in Essential Oils?

This is a particularly difficult subject to address. There is much talk on the web about quality and claiming to have the “best” oils. Much of this is about marketing and and what the consumer will swallow as the truth. Marketing has nothing to do with truth but about making the sale. You accept what marketing says and now their is credibility. I know of many people who have been educated by marketing and they believe what they say is true. What made the information true is that they decided that it was. Let me give you an example of how this works.

Organic food is now considered better food than food grown with pesticides and chemical fertilzers. I tend to buy organic food because I believe it is better for you and the planet. Doesn’t it stand to reason that organic essential oils would also be better? Using logical reasoning this would appear to be true.

 As a marketing person, I can use your belief in organic food to sale organic oils. In reality organic essential oils are not always the best. How do you know this? Quality of oils is determined by scientific testing called GCMS , gas chromatography and mass spectometry. These are two machines that test oils as to quality. I will talk on another blog as to how this equipment works, but for now organic oils often do not qualify for premium using these tests.

How can organic oils not be premium or the best? You need a fundalmental understanding of what essential oils are. The best quality oils are produced by plants under stress. Oils grown in the wild tend to test high for this reason. When you use organic methods, the plants tend not to be stressed. I call them happy plants. Essential oils are made by the plant to defend against attack, disease, damage, or severe weather conditions. Most evergreens produce high levels of essential oils, as they do not have a time of rest and recovery. Because organic oils come from happy plants and not stressed ones, they do not need to make high quality essential oil, as the plant does not need it. If you are buying organic essential oils, ask if the oil meets premium or therapeutic levels. The organic oil you are buying  may be a great oil, but the organic label does not tell you that.

The point can be made that organic oils do not have pesticide residue. Most plants that produce essential oils have the ability to defend against pests and do not need pesticides, but this is not always the case. Sometimes growers will have fungal outbreaks and will use chemicals. There is not a grower alive that would spend the money on pesticides and then cut the plant material and distill it. If the plant has been sprayed, there is only chemical residue left and it will not distill. These chemicals being larger molecules will be left behind with the plant material. Essential oils are small molecules and they can float in the air or evaporate.

There are energetic healers that can tell the difference between organic and nonorganic essential oils. Many of these people will read the energy of the oil and they experience organic as better. I have blindfolded some of these healers and asked them to pick out the organic oils. Some of them can and they use organic because it is best for them. There is much discussion on the energy or frequency of the oils but this is difficult to test in a objective, scientific way.

Just saying that an oil is organic does not mean that it tests at premium grade. If you have a moral reason for standing behind organic, then by all means do so. At the same time be informed on why you are making the decision. Organic oils for some do carry superior frequency and for them organic is better. For most organic just means spending more money for less quality.