Texture ingredientGalactomannanIn every formula

Caesalpinia Spinosa (Tara) Gum

Caesalpinia spinosa (Tara) · INCI Caesalpinia Spinosa (Tara) Gum

Every cream needs something to give it body, to keep the oils and the water from drifting apart, and to lend the whole thing a smooth, even feel as it goes on. In our formulas that job belongs to tara gum.

It is a texture ingredient rather than an active, and it earns its place by doing that one job well.

Tara gum, the purified seed powder, milled cold, and nothing else.

What it is

Tara gum is a galactomannan, a long-chain sugar molecule, milled from the seed of Caesalpinia spinosa, a small thorny tree native to the Peruvian Andes. The seed is cleaned, milled and dried at low temperature with no solvents involved, so what reaches the bottle is a purified plant powder and nothing else. It is vegetal and non-GMO. You will also have met it in the food aisle, where it thickens sauces and ice cream under the name E417.

It is a large molecule, which matters more than it sounds. A polymer this size sits on the surface of the skin rather than passing into it, and that tells you a good deal about what it can and cannot do.

What it does in our formulas

Three things, all of them about texture rather than treatment.

It thickens

Tara gum sets the viscosity of a cream, the difference between something that runs off your fingers and something that stays where you put it.

Well characterised

It steadies the emulsion

Oil and water would rather separate. Tara gum helps hold them together over the life of the product, consistent from the first pump to the last.

Well characterised

It improves the feel

Against other natural thickeners such as xanthan, tara gum gives a smoother, less stringy, less tacky slip, a large part of why we chose it.

Small sensory studies

A modest bonus

Skin-imaging studies show tara gum can leave a light film on the surface that may help hold a little moisture in the short term. We treat that as a small surface-level extra rather than a headline, the evidence is early, and comes mostly from formulas where tara gum was paired with other ingredients.

What the research does not show

This is the honest part, and worth reading if you have seen tara gum sold as something grander. You will find it marketed as three things it is not. Follow each claim back to its source and it does not belong to the gum.

Marketed as A hydrating active

The hydration story traces to a different, branded material that pairs a modified version of the gum with a large dose of glycerin, so the glycerin is doing much of the work. The purified seed powder we use has not been shown on its own to hydrate.

Marketed as A microbiome ingredient

The microbiome and anti-biofilm claims trace to extracts of the tree's pods, a separate part of the plant with a different chemistry. No microbiome study exists on the seed gum itself.

Marketed as An anti-ageing ingredient

Anti-ageing language comes from marketing around a multi-component branded complex, not from any primary evidence for the gum. We leave it out.

So we do not claim them. Tara gum is in our formulas to give them their texture and their stability, and that is how we describe it.

On the label and in the range

Tara gum appears in every one of our formulations, low in the ingredient list, at a fraction of a percent. On the label it reads as its INCI name, Caesalpinia Spinosa Gum. The exact percentage is published on each product page, as it is for everything else we use.

Is it suitable for me?

Tara gum has a long record of safe use in both food and skincare, and an independent expert-panel review of this family of plant gums found no safety concerns at the levels used in cosmetics. It is well tolerated, sits comfortably within a vegan routine, and is gentle enough for the sensitive skin types in the range.

Vegan-friendlySensitive-skin suitableNo known safety concerns

As with anything new, if your skin reacts easily it is worth patch testing first.

The research behind this page

We review the published literature. We do not conduct the studies below.

Rigano L, Deola M, Zaccariotto F, Colleoni T, Lionetti N. A New Gelling Agent and Rheology Modifier in Cosmetics: Caesalpinia spinosa Gum. Cosmetics 2019;6(2):34. →
Souza CRF, Melo MO, Maia Campos PMBG. Film-Forming, Moisturizing, and Sensory Properties of a Cosmetic Formulation Containing Tara Gum and Brazilian Berry Extracts. AAPS PharmSciTech 2024;25:71. →
de Melo MO, Maia Campos PMBG. Application of biophysical and skin imaging techniques to evaluate the film-forming effect of cosmetic formulations. International Journal of Cosmetic Science 2019;41:579-584. →
Johnson W Jr, Heldreth B, Bergfeld WF, et al. (Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel). Safety Assessment of Galactomannans as Used in Cosmetics. International Journal of Toxicology 2015;34(Suppl 1):35S-65S. →

Found in every Biotaderm formulation Shop the range