1991: Before “Clean Beauty” Was a Category
Uncle Harry’s Natural Products was founded in 1991. At that point, “clean beauty” was not a category. Natural oral care was a niche within a niche. The words “free from” hadn’t become marketing copy.
Harry Terhanian started the company because he genuinely believed that personal care products didn’t need the synthetic ingredients conventional brands were using — and he was willing to prove it with formulations built around minerals, plant extracts, and traditional ingredients that had worked for centuries before the modern cosmetics industry existed.
His daughter Subhadra “Subi” Terhanian now leads the company as CEO. In this conversation with Nour Abochama, she shares what 30+ years in natural oral care teaches you about ingredients, sustainability, consumer trust, and the difference between making products that are actually clean versus products that are marketed as clean.
What Makes Uncle Harry’s Different From “Natural” Brands That Aren’t
Subi is direct about the greenwashing problem: “We’ve watched hundreds of brands launch with ‘natural’ in their name over the past decade. Many of them are using one or two plant extracts as marketing anchors around a conventional synthetic base. That’s not what we do.”
Uncle Harry’s core toothpaste and oral care line is built around:
Bentonite clay — a mineral clay with a strong negative ionic charge that acts as a natural detoxifier. It adsorbs (binds to its surface) heavy metals and other toxins. Used as a mild abrasive for mechanical plaque removal. Contains naturally occurring trace minerals including silica, calcium, magnesium, and zinc.
Volcanic minerals — mineral-rich compounds that support remineralization. Remineralization is the process by which the enamel takes up minerals (primarily calcium and phosphate) from saliva and the local oral environment to repair early demineralization damage. Providing bioavailable minerals in the oral environment supports this natural repair process.
Essential oils — peppermint, clove, and tea tree as antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agents. All three have documented activity against oral pathogens. Clove oil (eugenol) has a centuries-long history of use in dentistry. Tea tree oil has been studied specifically for its effects on periodontal pathogens.
No fluoride, no glycerin, no synthetic preservatives, no artificial sweeteners.
The no-glycerin choice is deliberate and somewhat unusual. The theory — contested in mainstream dentistry — is that glycerin leaves a coating on teeth that may slow remineralization by reducing direct contact between tooth enamel and mineral-rich saliva. Harry’s formulations avoided glycerin from the beginning based on this reasoning.
Sustainability: What It Actually Costs to Do It Right
Sustainable packaging is more expensive. Sustainably sourced ingredients are more expensive. Running a business on these principles at small-brand scale means accepting margins that conventional brands wouldn’t accept.
Uncle Harry’s has made specific choices that cost more but align with their values:
Glass packaging over plastic. Glass is heavier (higher shipping costs), more fragile (higher breakage and return costs), but infinitely recyclable and doesn’t leach chemicals into the product. For oral care products used in the mouth, avoiding plasticizer leaching is a meaningful consideration.
Minimal packaging overall. No outer boxes for most products. The product is the packaging.
Earth-friendly ingredient sourcing. Bentonite clay is sourced from specific deposits known for purity. Essential oils are sourced from suppliers with documented sustainable harvesting practices.
“Our margins are lower than brands that cut corners,” Subi acknowledges. “But we’ve never had to reformulate to remove an ingredient we shouldn’t have used in the first place. That has value too.”
The Ingredient Verification Question
Nour raises the testing question directly: how does Uncle Harry’s verify that the minerals and clays they use are actually what they’re supposed to be, and free from contamination?
This is a real issue with mineral-based ingredients. Clays and volcanic minerals are extracted from the earth. Depending on the geological source, they can naturally contain heavy metals — arsenic, lead, cadmium — at levels that matter for products used in the mouth daily.
“We test every batch of raw material,” Subi confirms. “We’ve been doing this since long before it became an industry expectation. When you’re putting something in people’s mouths, you need to know what it actually is.”
Testing protocols for mineral-based oral care ingredients:
Identity testing — confirming the mineral composition matches the specification (FTIR, XRF, or wet chemistry methods for mineral identification)
Heavy metal screening — ICP-MS for lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury. For bentonite clay specifically, the FDA requires that clay-containing products for oral use demonstrate safety with respect to heavy metal content. USP standards for heavy metals in oral products set tight limits.
Microbial testing — mineral clays can harbor spore-forming organisms. Finished product testing for total aerobic count, yeast, mold, and absence of specified pathogens (Staph aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, Salmonella) is essential.
Preservative efficacy — even mineral-based products with essential oils as natural preservatives should be challenge-tested to verify the preservative system is effective at controlling microbial growth throughout shelf life.
The 30-Year Consumer Trust Lesson
Running a brand for 30+ years teaches you things that market research can’t.
Consistency is more valuable than novelty. Uncle Harry’s core toothpaste formula hasn’t changed dramatically since the beginning. The customers who discovered it in the 1990s are still buying it. They’re also buying it for their children and recommending it to friends. That kind of loyalty is built on a consistent product that works, not on reformulations chasing trends.
Community precedes marketing. Before social media, Uncle Harry’s grew through health food stores and word of mouth within naturopathic, holistic, and alternative medicine communities. The brand became trusted within those communities by showing up consistently and reliably. That foundational trust has been more durable than any paid acquisition strategy.
Ingredient integrity is the competitive moat. As natural beauty has become mainstream, Uncle Harry’s advantage isn’t in marketing spend — it’s in the fact that they’ve been doing this for 30 years and the formulation decisions from 1991 still hold up to modern scrutiny. Brands that reformulate opportunistically don’t have this kind of defensible foundation.
“The brands that launched in 2018 and called themselves ‘clean’ because it was trendy — many of them have already been acquired, reformulated, or disappeared,” Subi observes. “The ones that are still standing are the ones that were actually doing what they said they were doing.”
Sustainable Packaging: The Real Trade-Offs
The sustainable packaging conversation has become more sophisticated as the industry has matured. Simple answers — “glass is better than plastic,” “biodegradable is better than recyclable” — turn out to be more nuanced than they first appear.
Glass vs. plastic: Glass is infinitely recyclable in theory, but in practice, recycling rates for glass are lower than for plastics in many municipalities. The energy cost of manufacturing and shipping glass (which is heavier) is higher. For oral care products used in the mouth, the chemical inertness of glass is a genuine advantage. The trade-offs are real.
Post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic: Many natural brands are moving toward PCR plastic, which uses existing plastic waste rather than virgin petroleum. PCR has a lower environmental footprint than virgin plastic and is more widely recyclable than glass in many markets. It’s not perfect, but it’s often the most practical option at scale.
Refill systems: The most effective approach to packaging waste is refill — concentrated formats or refill pods that reduce the volume of packaging per unit of product. This is harder to execute at the retail level but increasingly viable through direct-to-consumer models.
Uncle Harry’s choice to use glass is a values statement about chemical purity and long-term sustainability, made by a company small enough to accept the margin impact. Larger brands are working toward different solutions at different scales.
Key Takeaways
- Bentonite clay provides natural mild abrasion, trace mineral content, and ionic adsorption of oral toxins — without the synthetic abrasives in conventional toothpaste
- Natural essential oil preservatives (clove, peppermint, tea tree) have documented antimicrobial activity against oral pathogens but require challenge testing to verify preservative efficacy
- Mineral-based oral care ingredients (clay, volcanic minerals) require rigorous heavy metal testing — particularly for lead, arsenic, and cadmium — given their earth-extracted origin
- Brands with 30-year track records in natural products have formulation consistency that can’t be replicated by brands chasing trends
- Sustainable packaging decisions (glass vs. PCR plastic vs. refill) involve genuine trade-offs between chemical inertness, environmental footprint, and cost
This article is based on Episode 31 of Nourify & Beautify with Subhadra Terhanian of Uncle Harry’s. Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen on Podbean.
