How to Choose An Essential Oil

Need Help Finding A Quality Essential Oil Brand?

It can be difficult to identify a quality essential oil brand. With that said, there are three important things to consider when perusing the market.

1. Purity: A brand that produces an unadulterated final product.    
2. Quality: A brand that uses the proper method of extraction.
3. Reputation: A brand that is well-known and trusted by past and present consumers.

How to Tell if Essential Oils are Pure

What do pure essential oils look like or smell like and what are the essential oil purity standards? If everyone is being honest, they will acknowledge that there isn’t a clear definition of what constitutes a “pure” oil. It’s also equally important to recognize that adulteration is a significant concern. Especially when you consider that this is a product you will be breathing, ingesting, or absorbing into your body.

So again, how can you tell if essential oils are pure?

Check the Label

Reading the content displayed on a bottle of oil will typically be your first clue into its authenticity. Additionally, identifying the Latin name can be critical in understanding how to use an oil.

Lavender is a perfect example [1]:  

• L. angustifolia (also referred to as “true lavender”) is an oil often used for clinical aromatherapy and has a high anti-inflammatory and sedative ester. It also contains linalyl acetate, and has almost no camphors, which is a ketone with a stimulating effect.  
• L. intermedia, on the other hand, has its own therapeutic uses but can constitute up to 40% camphors, depending on the variety.

“A rose by any other name may be just as sweet, but not so for lavender.”

Checking for the botanical name, allows you to build the first wall of defense against fake essential oil brands.

The Cost of Essential Oils: You Get What You Pay For   

By and large, this maximum rings true for essential oils. If an oil band is selling its product at a significantly lower cost, I would suggest taking a second look. Start by reading the labeling and completing some additional research on the brand.

It is also important to remember that it isn’t enough for a company to simply declare their oils as “pure.” and that there is additional cost in providing testing in order to prove oil purity.

Which leads us to the third criteria – testing.      

Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) Testing

The two tests that are commonly conducted by businesses selling pure essential oils are the gas chromatography and mass spectrometry tests (GC/MS). In short, these tests analyze the constituents in an oil. Because each batch can be noticeably different (depending on weather, location, harvesting time, method of distillation, etc.), the most responsible approach is to complete testing on every single batch of oils received from a distiller.

How to Determine the Quality of Essential Oil Brands  

As I mentioned earlier, there are several factors that go into what components are present in an oil. Growing a crop for the intended purpose of essential oil is no small feat. It requires special consideration to climate, cultivation, and harvesting methods, as well as, time of harvesting.

Then, in order to ensure the continued quality of an essential oil, a distiller has to use the correct part of the plant (flowers, leaves, wood, bark, roots, seeds, or peel) and has to use the correct method of production (distillation, cold-pressing, or chemical).     

Lastly, there’s the matter of storage. In order to maintain the quality of an oil, it is important to consider the method and length of storage.

Pro Tip: Only buy oils that are stored in dark, glass bottles!

Grower ➝ Distiller ➝ Distributor: any one of these groups can drop the figurative ball, which is why it is so, so important for you to trust the company that you do business with (which surprise, surprise, is my next point).   

Why We Choose DoTerra

At Miller Living, we’ve obviously stuck with the DoTerra oil band because we believe it checks all the boxes.

• Purity: doTerra completes third-party, GC/MS testing on all of their oils, and allow you to pull up the specifications on each individual bottle of oil – you can check the constituents of the compounds in your doTerra oils here.  
• Quality: All of doTerra’s oils are extracted via distillation or cold-pressing, and in order to ensure prime growing conditions for the plants used in their oils, they source for over 40 different countries.   
• Reputation: doTerra is both well-known and trusted by consumers. Because it’s an MLM company, the distributors of the oil are the people using the oil! Full transparency here, in the Miller home we spend well over $100 each month on essential oils because we trust and love the product.

We certainly recognize that doTerra isn’t the only reputable oil company that produces pure, quality essential oils. However, it is one of the few out there, and it is the one that Miller Living trusts.

Help Us Help You

There is an ever growing pool of information regarding essential oils, making it difficult to know where to look for answers. If you have a question regarding essential oils and would like help3 Simple Steps to Identify Fake Essential Oil Brands  
3 Simple Steps to Identify Fake Essential Oil Brands  
finding an answer, please feel free to shoot us a message!