I’ve been rereading Watership Down, the classic by Richard Adams. It’s a story about rabbits, but it’s also about much more than that. A part of me is always worried about revisiting an old classic, since I’m afraid that I’ll notice that it just isn’t as magical as I remembered. In the case of Watership Down, I had no reason to be concerned. I was happy to see that my friends Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and the rest of the clan were still just as lively the second time around. Each chapter starts off by quoting a passage from another literary work. One of the chapters includes the previous excerpt from Sidney Keyes' Four Postures of Death. I decided to quote it today because of its mention of “too beautiful for…the sun to burn.” This may be true for something like a sunflower, but it’s certainly not true for humans (no matter how beautiful they may be)—we’re all vulnerable to getting sunburned. Hence, we need sunscreen.

While I was searching for other Vitamin C serums a few months ago, I came across this intriguing sunscreen from Mad Hippie. It’s SPF 30, and a physical sunscreen that only includes one active ingredient: zinc oxide (16%). This also happens to be the only FDA-approved sunscreen ingredient to filter every range of the UV spectrumL UVA1, UVA2, and UVB rays. Let’s give it a closer look and ask my dad what he thinks.

Mad Hippie Facial SPF Ingredients

This sunscreen includes a bunch of soothing ingredients like aloe, shea butter, and glycerin. It also contains antioxidants that may enhance its UV protection, including vitamin C and vitamin E. Natural oils like jasmine oil, avocado oil, carrot seed oil, sweet orange oil, and raspberry seed oil may also help improve the skin-moisturizing and soothing properties of this sunscreen. It’s also fragrance-free.

My Dad the Chemist’s review of Mad Hippie Facial SPF

According to Mad Hippie’s website, the company uses “natural, micronized, nano-free zinc oxide that goes on clear and leaves no white residue.” That sounds promising. My dad’s primary concern with zinc oxide-based sunscreens is that it will leave a white cast, but he appears to be hopeful about this particular sunscreen and its ability to spread without leaving visible white residue.

I have yet to try this sunscreen, but I’m going to add it to my “to try” list. I think it’s worth a shot, especially since it contains so many natural ingredients, a pretty high percentage of zinc oxide, and lots of antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E, which have been shown to increase the protectiveness of SPF filters like zinc oxide, in studies like this one.

unsplash-logoMarko Blažević

Further reading

• Other sunscreen reviews
• Reviews of products that contain zinc oxide
• My favorite physical sunscreen: Australian Gold Tinted Face Sunscreen