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Paste an ingredient list — or pick a product — and see which ingredients can feed Malassezia, the yeast behind fungal acne.
Malassezia is a yeast that lives on nearly everyone’s skin. It cannot build its own fatty acids, so it feeds on the ones it finds — chains of 11 to 24 carbons — and its enzymes free them from fats in sebum and in skincare.
The evidence comes mostly from yeast grown in the lab on single fatty acids; a finished formula and real skin are more complicated, so the checker leans cautious. It is an aid for choosing products, not a diagnosis.
Fungal acne (Malassezia folliculitis) is not acne at all: it is a yeast infection of the hair follicles. Malassezia lives on almost everyone’s skin and causes trouble only when it overgrows — usually as small, uniform, itchy bumps on the forehead, chest or back that do not respond to ordinary acne treatments.
Malassezia cannot make its own fatty acids, so it feeds on the ones on your skin: fatty acids with 11 to 24 carbons, and the esters, oils, butters and polysorbates its enzymes break them out of. That is what this checker flags — isopropyl myristate, glyceryl stearate, polysorbate 80, most plant oils and butters, stearic and lauric acid, lanolin, lecithin.
Yes. Squalane is a hydrocarbon, not a fat, and caprylic/capric triglyceride (MCT oil) is built from 8- and 10-carbon chains — too short for Malassezia to use. Mineral oil, petrolatum and silicones are safe for the same reason.
Fatty alcohols such as cetyl, stearyl and cetearyl alcohol are not fatty acids, and most people with fungal acne tolerate them. Some cautious lists still avoid them, so we show them as “possible”, not as triggers.
Fungal acne bumps are small and all the same size, often itch, and cluster where you sweat. Regular acne mixes blackheads, whiteheads and deeper spots. If bumps do not budge with benzoyl peroxide or antibiotics, ask a dermatologist — a quick skin scraping confirms it.
No. It means none of its ingredients is a known Malassezia food. Treatment is antifungal — ketoconazole or zinc pyrithione washes, sometimes oral antifungals — prescribed or recommended by a dermatologist.
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