Beauty From the Inside Out: A Conversation with The Beauty Chef Founder Carla Oates

By Cheryl Gushue | Beauty Hub Magazine

When Carla Oates launched The Beauty Chef in 2009, the beauty industry wasn’t ready for her. Gut health was fringe territory, fermented beauty powders didn’t exist as a commercial category, and retailers had no shelf to put her on. Sixteen years later, the brand she built from a personal discovery has helped reshape the way the world thinks about skin, health, and ageing. We sat down with Carla to talk about the evolution of ingestible beauty, what consumers are getting wrong about supplements, and why longevity is really about resilience, not reversing time.

The ingestible beauty category has evolved from niche to near-mainstream. When you first launched, what resistance did you encounter?

Before I started The Beauty Chef, nobody was talking about gut health. The concept of inner beauty was so left field, and a Glow® powder made from fermented foods with probiotic bacteria for gut health and glowing skin was even weirder! I was told by numerous people that it was too strange a concept and wouldn’t ever take off. But I felt so passionate about what I had discovered, a real solution to skin and gut issues that I knew worked.

One of the hardest things was convincing manufacturers to support our low volumes in the beginning. Getting product into the store wasn’t easy either because retailers didn’t have a category for it. Ingestible beauty simply didn’t exist.

My first big commercial break came when I was approached by an agent at TVSN, the TV home shopping network in Australia. Some people told me not to do home shopping because they didn’t think it was very cool, but it was a really good platform for me because the product is so unique and educational. I was given an hour to explain what I was doing and how it would help people.

Now, gut health has become an important part of the wellness landscape, and it’s amazing to see. Just like with hair and fashion, there are trends within wellness that come and go, but the gut really is the foundation of it all. More and more research is proving its influence over our skin, energy, immunity, digestion, longevity, and whole-body wellness, which is why it will always be the driver behind everything we do.

Your philosophy positions skin as a reflection of internal health. Can you explain the gut-skin axis?

Our skin and gut are in constant communication with one another via what is known as the gut-skin axis. This incredible pathway allows the gut and skin to converse, mainly via the microbiome, and as our largest organ, our skin is often the first place to show us when something is thrown out of balance. If we experience issues within our digestive tract, it can trigger not only gut health symptoms but skin problems such as rashes, inflammation, blemishes, and redness.

A simple analogy is to think of our gut as a garden and our skin as its plants. If the soil in the garden isn’t healthy, balanced, and thriving with a good array of nutrients and bacteria, then the plants that grow within its soil will struggle to bloom. For glowing, healthy skin, we must first turn our attention to our gut.

This thinking has only broadened since its inception, as more and more studies highlight the connection between our gut and overall health and well-being. The gut-skin axis isn’t an anomaly. There’s also the gut-hormone axis, the gut-liver axis, and the gut-immune axis. The list goes on.

Today’s consumer is deeply educated yet overwhelmed. What are they getting wrong about supplements?

Education is so important to me and a big part of The Beauty Chef. I’m passionate about creating a brand that empowers people to become the happiest and healthiest versions of themselves. What makes this tricky is that there are so many ingredients being marketed as ‘the next big thing.’ We’re being bombarded by the individual benefits of all of them, making it seem like we need to take one product for one thing, and another for another thing entirely.

This is why, rather than narrowing in on single-ingredient supplements, we create comprehensive, solutions-focused formulas. Creatine is quite popular at the moment. It’s a key part of one of our formulas, Body Electric™, but it’s also partnered alongside electrolytes, hydrolyzed protein, and activated B vitamins for an all-in-one performance blend that supports deep hydration, energy, physical performance, mental stamina, and recovery.

Our formulas are complex, so your routine doesn’t have to be. Complex formulas, simple rituals.

How has the conversation around “beauty from within” shifted post-pandemic?

People’s beauty priorities really shifted during and post-pandemic. Harper’s Bazaar reported that 82 percent of women started wearing less makeup, and focus was pulled towards skincare and wellness, which naturally progressed people’s interest in gut health and opened up the conversation about beauty from within. As a result, we saw a significant uplift in traffic and engagement in our education pieces, as well as sales of our hero supernutrient powders Glow® and Glow Ageless™.

Do you see ingestible beauty merging further with functional medicine and longevity science?

Yes. When I founded The Beauty Chef, it came from the belief that glowing skin is a reflection of what’s happening inside the body, particularly in the gut. What’s exciting now is that longevity science is catching up to what we’ve known for years: the gut sits at the centre of everything.

Your microbiome influences inflammation, immunity, hormones, nutrient absorption, and even mood, all of which shape how we age. So when we talk about beauty from within, we’re really talking about supporting the biological systems that determine long-term vitality.

For me, longevity isn’t about chasing youth. It’s about resilience. It’s about supporting cellular energy, reducing chronic inflammation, and preserving microbiome diversity so we can feel strong, clear, and vibrant at every age.

Ingestible beauty and functional medicine naturally intersect because both are focused on root cause, not surface symptoms. When the gut is supported, the benefits show up everywhere, including the skin. Beauty becomes a reflection of how well you’re ageing from the inside out.

Sustainability is no longer optional. How has your approach to sourcing and packaging evolved?

From day one, sustainability has been top of mind when creating our products. As a brand, we pride ourselves on health and transparency, and this extends to our sustainability practices. We ferment our products in our state-of-the-art Probiotic Lab in Sydney, which we opened in 2018, so all of The Beauty Chef products are locally made. We use local, Certified Organic, and biodynamic ingredients wherever possible.

Our Deep Marine Collagen™ is sustainably sourced from wild-caught, deep-sea North Atlantic cod, in accordance with stringent Marine Stewardship Council standards. The banana starch used in our Daily Supergreens™ powder is made using cosmetically “imperfect” bananas that would otherwise end up in landfill.

Our HQ is currently powered by 100% renewable energy, and in 2020, The Beauty Chef became a signatory to the Australian Packaging Covenant Organization, a national, co-regulatory framework that helps businesses hold accountability and share responsibility for the collective impact of packaging on our environment.

What does true transparency look like in the supplement industry?

Since launching in 2009, it’s always been important to me for The Beauty Chef to be a brand our community can trust. From our ingredients to our packaging and our overall values and philosophy, true transparency is knowing and communicating every part of your business.

In Australia, we undergo extensive quality and safety testing. Every batch of Beauty Chef products is assessed to ensure it adheres to the strict quality and safety standards set by leading regulatory authorities, including the FSANZ Food Standards Code and the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia.

And in 2018, we built our own state-of-the-art Probiotic Lab in Sydney to control every step of our unique Flora Culture® fermentation process, constructing the ideal environment to ensure optimal potency and quality control.

About The Beauty Chef

Founded in 2009 by Carla Oates, The Beauty Chef helped pioneer the global inner beauty category at a time when nobody was talking about gut health. What began as a deeply personal discovery, connecting her daughter’s skin issues to diet and gut function, became the foundation for a brand that would change the way the beauty industry thinks about skin. The Beauty Chef’s first product, the now-iconic Glow® powder, was a fermented, probiotic-rich formula so ahead of its time that retailers didn’t even have a category for it. Today, the brand has a devoted global following and a full range of fermented super powders, elixirs, capsules, and topical skincare, all developed alongside microbiologists, naturopaths, and nutritionists, and produced in The Beauty Chef’s own state-of-the-art Probiotic Lab in Sydney using Certified Organic and biodynamic ingredients.

At the heart of everything Carla does is a simple, science-backed belief: glowing skin is a reflection of what’s happening inside the body. The gut and skin are in constant communication through what is known as the gut-skin axis, and when the gut is supported, the benefits show up everywhere. As longevity science and functional medicine move into the mainstream, The Beauty Chef sits at the intersection of both, offering comprehensive formulas designed to work synergistically rather than targeting single symptoms in isolation. As Carla puts it: complex formulas, simple rituals. It is inner beauty rooted in biology, and it has always been that way.