Eco test
Effective anti-dandruff shampoo or foam whip? Three popular branded products rattled through the test with a bang
Away with the scales! Anti-dandruff shampoo is supposed to help, but does it?
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Anti-dandruff shampoo should bring the scalp back into balance and put an end to the annoying suffering. But do the manufacturers keep their promises? Ökotest tested the shampoos and found black sheep among popular brands of all things.
Straw on your head, greasy roots, split ends – the right hair care is a science in itself. Especially people who struggle with flaky scalp can sing a song about it. Ökotest has tested which anti-dandruff shampoos really work and which are no more than foam whippers.
Dandruff is not just dandruff. A distinction is made between dry and greasy dandruff. The first variant is mainly a consequence of a lack of moisture, in the second case yeast fungi are involved, which must be treated with an antifungal agent. This distinction should be taken into account when choosing an anti-dandruff shampoo.
Anti-dandruff products from the natural cosmetics shelf are milder
People with dry dandruff don’t have to pull out the big club right away. You can make small adjustments to ensure that the scalp gets enough moisture. A regular, milder shampoo can already do the trick. But if you want an anti-dandruff shampoo, Ökotest recommends one from the natural cosmetics shelf, as these products work with milder ingredients. In most conventional shampoos, the testers found an antifungal ingredient that is not necessary in this case.
Ökotest has tested seven anti-dandruff shampoos that are certified as natural cosmetics and 20 conventional ones. The natural cosmetics shampoos perform excellently, six are “very good” and one is “good”. The price-performance winner is the very good “Alverde care shampoo anti-dandruff” from DM for 2.44 euros.
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Unnecessarily aggressive active ingredients
With conventional products, only one shampoo can convince across the board: “Annemarie Börlind Active Shampoo for Dandruff”. With a price of 16.19 euros, it’s not exactly a bargain either. The rest of the conventional shampoos deliver a mixed result, six are still “good”. However, according to the Ökotest, four products are not worth buying, one of which is only “poor”, three fail completely with “insufficient”.
There are three popular shampoo brands that deliver an underground result: “Schwarzkopf Schauma Anti-Dandruff Intensive Shampoo” is only “poor” according to the Ökotest. What’s even worse is what “Pantene Pro-V Anti-Dandruff Shampoo” and “Head & Shoulders Anti-Dandruff Deep Care Shampoo” do. They are among the products that rattle through the test with “insufficient” – the culprits are, among other things, ingredients that Ökotest evaluates as unnecessarily aggressive for the scalp.
You can read the entire test for a fee oekotest.de