Most supplement labels are designed to be skimmed, not read. Here is how to read one properly, and the four things worth checking before you buy anything.
1. Proprietary blends
This is the big one. A proprietary blend looks like this:
Vitality Blend 800mg — marine collagen, MSM, keratin, bamboo extract, nettle root, grape seed
You are told the total weight of the blend. You are not told how much of each ingredient is in it. That 800mg could be 780mg of the cheapest ingredient and 20mg spread across the rest.
Brands defend this as protecting their formula. In practice it hides how little of the expensive ingredients they have used. If a label will not tell you the quantity of each active, treat the whole thing as unknown.
2. Fairy dusting
Related, but visible even on transparent labels. A brand includes a headline ingredient at a dose far below anything meaningful, purely so it can appear on the front of the pack. The ingredient is genuinely present. It is just present in a quantity that does nothing.
The check: find the amount per serving, then look up what dose the research actually used. If the gap is an order of magnitude, it is there for the label, not for you.
3. What NRV percentages actually mean
NRV stands for Nutrient Reference Value — the EU and UK reference intake for a nutrient. A supplement showing 100% NRV provides the reference amount for an average adult.
Two things trip people up. First, very high percentages are not automatically impressive: water-soluble vitamins like B12 and biotin have low reference values, so 833% or 10,000% is common and not the achievement it appears to be. Second, some nutrients have no established NRV at all — you will see a dash or an asterisk. That does not mean the ingredient is bad, only that no reference value exists.
4. The ingredients that are not actives
Scan past the nutrition table to the ingredients line. Common additions include:
- Magnesium stearate — a flow agent that stops powder sticking to manufacturing equipment
- Silicon dioxide — an anti-caking agent
- Titanium dioxide — a whitener, now banned as a food additive in the EU
- Bulking agents — used to fill out a capsule that would otherwise look under-filled
None of these are dangerous at the amounts used. But they take up space in a capsule, and a product with several of them is telling you something about how it was made and what it was optimised for.
A quick checklist
- Is every active ingredient listed with its own quantity?
- Are the headline ingredients present at doses that mean something?
- Does the serving size match what you would realistically take?
- How many of the ingredients are actives rather than manufacturing aids?
- Is there an allergen statement, and does it cover what is actually in the product?
Where we stand
Every ingredient in our range is listed with its individual quantity. No proprietary blends, no magnesium stearate, no silicon dioxide, no titanium dioxide. You can read the full breakdown on any product page before you buy, not after it arrives.
We would rather you used this checklist on us than took our word for it.