Most supplement labels are written to be read quickly and understood vaguely. Once you know the four places information goes missing, you can price a product in about thirty seconds — and you can check ours the same way.
1. The serving size is where the number hides
The front of a bottle says a number. The Supplement Facts panel says how many capsules you need to take to get it. Those are different claims, and the gap between them is the oldest trick in the category.
A bottle advertising "1,000 mg" at a 2-capsule serving contains 500 mg per capsule. A bottle advertising the same 1,000 mg at a 1-capsule serving contains twice as much per capsule. Same front label. Different product.
So the first thing to find is not the milligram figure. It is the line that reads Serving size: 2 capsules — and then the line below it, Servings per container. A 60-capsule bottle at a 3-capsule serving is a 20-day supply, not a two-month one.
Worked example from our own catalog: Magnesium Glycinate is 90 capsules providing 275 mg of elemental magnesium per 3-capsule serving — so 30 servings, and the number that matters is 275, not the much larger figure you would get by counting the weight of the glycinate compound itself.
2. Elemental weight vs compound weight
Minerals are sold bound to something else. Magnesium glycinate is magnesium plus glycine; magnesium oxide is magnesium plus oxygen. The compound weighs considerably more than the mineral inside it.
A label that says "Magnesium Glycinate 2,000 mg" is telling you the weight of the compound. The amount of magnesium in it might be around 200 mg. A label that says "Magnesium (as magnesium glycinate) 200 mg" is telling you the elemental amount, which is the one every study is run on.
Neither label is lying. One of them is just much easier to misread, which is presumably why it gets used. Look for the word elemental, or for the mineral named first with the form in parentheses.
3. Extract ratios and standardization are not the same thing
You will see mushroom and botanical extracts described as "10:1." That means ten kilograms of raw material were reduced to one kilogram of extract. It is a processing statement, not a potency statement. Ten kilograms of a weak starting batch concentrated tenfold is still weak.
Standardization is the statement that actually constrains the product. "Standardized to 40% polysaccharides" means a measured percentage of a named compound has to be present. That is a specification a manufacturer can be held to.
Our Lion's Mane is 1,000 mg per 2-capsule serving standardized to 40% polysaccharides, which is 400 mg of the standardized fraction. Our 10-Mushroom Blend Gummies are the opposite case, and we would rather say so here than let you find out later: they are ten species as 10:1 fruiting body extracts totalling 250 mg per serving, and the per-species amounts are not broken out. If you want a specific mushroom at a specific dose, buy that mushroom on its own, not a blend — ours included.
4. The proprietary blend
Federal labelling rules let a manufacturer group several ingredients under one name and disclose only the combined weight. A "Focus Matrix 750 mg" is compliant. It is also unfalsifiable: 740 mg of the cheapest ingredient and 10 mg split between the two on the front of the box would produce exactly the same label.
There is one legitimate use for this — protecting a genuinely novel formulation ratio — and a great many illegitimate ones. The practical rule: if you cannot calculate the amount of the ingredient you are buying the product for, you are not buying a dose, you are buying a name.
The part nobody puts on the label: how our dose compares to the studied dose
A product can disclose every amount honestly and still sit far below the amounts used in the research that made the ingredient interesting. This is the most common gap in the category and the hardest to see, because it requires knowing the literature rather than reading the bottle.
Three examples from our own catalog, including the unflattering ones:
- Creatine Monohydrate — 5,000 mg per scoop. This is the dose most of the published maintenance research is run on, undiluted and unblended. It is the clearest case in our lineup of a label dose matching a studied dose.
- Lion's Mane — 1,000 mg per serving. Published human trials generally run 1–3 g/day, so ours sits at the low end of the studied range rather than the middle of it. That is a real limitation and it is printed on the product page too.
- Cordyceps Energy Gummies — 200 mg cordyceps extract per gummy, plus four supporting ingredients at 25 mg each. Those 25 mg amounts are a small fraction of what research on those ingredients uses. They are disclosed, and we are not going to pretend 25 mg is doing the work of 250.
The same logic applies to anything where an ingredient appears at a token amount. Our Ashwagandha is 650 mg of root per capsule with 5 mg of black pepper alongside it. We print the 5 mg. We are deliberately not telling you what 5 mg of black pepper accomplishes, because we do not have data in hand on that amount, and the honest answer to "what does this do" is sometimes "less than the label's presence implies."
A thirty-second label check
- Find the serving size. Convert everything to per-serving, then divide the container by it for days of supply.
- For minerals, find the elemental amount, not the compound weight.
- For extracts, look for a standardization percentage. A bare ratio like 10:1 is not one.
- If any ingredient you care about is inside a proprietary blend, treat its amount as unknown.
- Compare the per-serving amount to the amounts used in research on that ingredient. If the brand will not tell you where its dose sits relative to the studied range, that silence is information.
What we have not earned yet
Applying our own standard to ourselves: we publish per-serving amounts for every product we sell, and we say where our dose sits below the studied range. We do not publish certificates of analysis yet — no third-party test results are posted on this site, and until they are, the doses above are label and supplier specifications rather than independently verified measurements. We would rather state that plainly than let a GMP-certified-facility line do work it cannot do. It is the open item we are working on.
If you want to see the whole catalog with the amounts printed next to each product, start here, or browse all products.
Safety, which is part of reading a label
Dose disclosure matters in both directions. Supplements interact with prescription medication — blood-sugar, thyroid, blood-thinning and sedative medications are the common categories — and several of the ingredients above are not appropriate during pregnancy or breastfeeding, or with kidney disease. Take the label to a pharmacist or your clinician before adding anything, especially if you take a daily prescription. A product that will not tell you its amounts makes that conversation impossible, which is the practical reason this all matters.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.