Johnson's baby shampoo cheat ?

Monanore

I've used Johnson's baby shampoo for years, for its kind non-chemical nature.

But recently it has changed drastically - it seems to be watered down so you use far more and it doesn't seem to lather properly either. So obviously it costs you more too.

Could this apparent deceit be related to Johnson's now being in different ownership ?

elsien

Shampoo doesn’t need to create lots of lather  to clean hair effectively. It added as an artificial extra because it’s what customers expect to see. So perhaps they’ve changed their ingredients to reflect a more eco-friendly process 

Have you tried using less and  just seeing if it makes any difference or not?

Spoonie_Turtle

They have over time reformulated it to use gentler surfactants - up until at least the mid-2010s the main detergent was sodium laureth sulphate, which was no different from lots of adult shampoos and shower gels.  Then they decreased the concentration of that using more of other, gentler, surfactants.

The latest ingredients, I'm not surprised it doesn't lather very much.  Cocamidopropyl Betaine does lather (although not as much as sulphates) but now with Decyl Glucoside and Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, those barely lather at all and they are generally very gentle surfactants.  They also clean less well, which is fine for babies who won't have products or adult sebum needing cleaning off their hair/scalp and potentially less general pollution/gunk to have settled on their hair.  Then polyquarternium-10 is a film-forming ingredient to make hair feel soft and help with anti-static.  So it is to feel mildly conditioning without being a conditioner.
(The first 5 ingredients are the main ones to look at for toiletries so I'm not going to go into the rest.)

[Incidentally everything is chemical, every type of matter is made up of chemicals.  It's just a case of what those chemicals do.]

It's not deceit, it's genuinely to make it even gentler for babies.

If it's not working so well for you any more, maybe time to try something different.  If you have an old bottle of the formula you liked, the ingredients list on that can help you track down something likely to be similar.  Adult shampoos might be more concentrated than the baby shampoo was but that would mean you can use less of it to get the same effect.

Monanore

@Spoonie_Turtle

Thanks for the expert advice.   I've found Tesco's Fred & Flo baby shampoo which retains sodium laureth sulphate, so I'll try that.