The number on the front of a supplement bottle is chosen by a marketing department. It is almost always a true number. It is almost never the number you are buying.
There are four ways a front-of-bottle figure gets bigger than the thing you actually want. None of them is illegal. Once you can spot them you will read every label differently — including ours.
One. The compound weight
Minerals are not sold loose. They are bonded to a carrier, and the front of the bottle usually prints the weight of the whole molecule rather than the mineral inside it.
Magnesium glycinate is magnesium bonded to glycine, and the magnesium is about fourteen per cent of that molecule. So 1,000 mg of magnesium glycinate is roughly 141 mg of actual magnesium.
Both numbers are true. Only one of them is the reason you bought it. Guess which one goes on the front.
The same applies to zinc, iron, calcium and the rest. The word to look for on the panel is elemental.
Two. The extract percentage
This is the one that catches most people, because the panel looks detailed enough to be honest.
Botanicals are sold as extracts standardised to a percentage of their active compound. Two lines on the same panel can look almost identical and be twenty times apart.
A berberine bottle advertising 800 mg might break down as 790 mg of an extract standardised to 8 per cent, plus 10 mg of one standardised to 97 per cent. Multiply each out: about 63 mg of berberine from the first line, about 10 mg from the second. Roughly 73 mg of berberine in an 800 mg product.
Turmeric does the same thing. 635 mg of raw turmeric powder alongside 10 mg of a 95 per cent curcumin extract works out at about 30 mg of curcuminoids — from a bottle whose front says 645.
The tell: when a large raw-powder number sits next to a tiny standardised to X% line, the tiny line is doing the work and the large one is mostly filler.
Three. The blend total
When a label prints one figure for a whole list of ingredients — a proprietary blend — that figure is the list added together. Nothing on the panel tells you how it splits.
A 1,500 mg joint blend of six ingredients is printed accurately whether the two expensive ones are 400 mg each or 4 mg each. The cheap ones can legally carry almost all of the weight, and you cannot tell from the outside. We print a worked example of exactly this, two panels side by side, on our home page.
Four. Concentration
Fish oil is the clearest case. A 3,600 mg capsule at thirty per cent purity and a 3,600 mg capsule at sixty per cent purity carry the same number on the front and double the difference in EPA and DHA — which is the part the research is actually about.
Thirty seconds, any bottle
- Find the elemental figure, not the compound weight.
- Read the percentage on every extract, then do the multiplication.
- If you see a blend total instead of per-ingredient doses, assume the worst split.
- Divide the capsule count by the serving size. A 120-count at two a day is a two-month supply, not four.
What we do about it
We have our products made under our own label, which means none of this is something we have to work around. It is simply something we do not do.
- The elemental dose goes on the front, not the compound weight.
- Every ingredient gets its own number. No proprietary blends.
- Every extract states its standardisation percentage on the line next to it.
- Serving sizes are given as a daily dose, because a two-capsule serving at half the strength is not a better deal.
Why believe our numbers?
Because we would rather you did not have to take our word for it. Every batch is tested by an outside laboratory for identity, potency and contaminants. Email us and we will send the Certificate of Analysis for the batch you were shipped — not a generic one, yours.
A printed number is a claim. A batch test is a measurement. We would rather hand you the measurement.
The figures on this page are worked examples of formulations that are common across the category. They are not descriptions of any particular brand's product.