Would I still buy this if the amounts were printed?
If the honest answer is no, the blend is doing the selling. That is the cleanest test on this page.
How to Read a Proprietary Blend on a Supplement Label
One number, twenty ingredients, no way to check any of them. Here is what a blend label actually tells you, and what it does not.
Quick answer
A proprietary blend is a legal way to group ingredients on a supplement label and print one total weight instead of each individual amount. Under 21 CFR 101.36 the ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight, so you know the order but not the amounts. To judge one, divide the total weight by the number of ingredients, count any extract ratio in the product's favour, and compare the result against the doses used in published research on the first two or three names.
What a proprietary blend is
Turn a supplement bottle over and you will usually find two kinds of line on the panel. Some ingredients have their own number and a percent Daily Value. Others are gathered under a heading such as Proprietary Blend, with one weight for the whole group.
That grouping is legal and specifically provided for. The federal rule for supplement labels, 21 CFR 101.36, allows a manufacturer to declare the total weight of a blend rather than the weight of each ingredient inside it. The one requirement is that the ingredients are listed in descending order of predominance by weight.
So a blend label tells you two real things. It tells you the total, and it tells you the order. The first ingredient weighs more than the second, which weighs more than the third, all the way down.
It does not tell you whether the first ingredient is half the blend or a twentieth of it. That is the whole of the information gap, and it is the gap the format exists to create.
A worked example, using our own label
Our own product is a fair example, and using somebody else's would be cowardly.
The Cognizil panel declares chromium at 7 mcg with a 20% Daily Value. Everything else, 21 ingredients, sits inside a proprietary blend of 15.47 mg.
From the order we know maca weighs more than African mango, which weighs more than grape seed, down to L-carnitine HCl at the bottom. From the total we know the whole group weighs 15.47 mg.
What we cannot tell you, and what nobody outside the company can tell you, is how much ginseng is in a dropperful. That is what a blend label means in practice.
How to judge a proprietary blend in four steps
Four minutes with a calculator will tell you more than an hour of reading the sales page.
Find the total weight
It is printed next to the blend heading. Write it down. If there is no total at all, that is a label problem and a reason to stop.
Count the ingredients and divide
Twenty-one ingredients in 15.47 mg averages about 0.74 mg each. The average is not the real distribution, because the first ingredient weighs more, but it sets the scale.
Count the extract ratios in the product's favour
Look for marks such as 20:1 or 10:1, usually defined in the footnotes. A 20:1 extract means one milligram stands in for roughly twenty milligrams of raw plant, which multiplies the raw equivalent substantially.
Compare against the research on the first two names
Search the top ingredient plus the word trial, and find the dose used. If studies used grams and the blend offers milligrams even after the extract ratio, you now know the size of the gap.
Do that on the Cognizil panel and the arithmetic goes like this: 15.47 mg of mostly 20:1 material is in the region of 300 mg of raw plant equivalent, shared between 21 ingredients. The maca trial we cite elsewhere on this site used 3 g a day of extract. The gap is real and we would rather do the sum for you than hope you do not.
What a blend label does and does not tell you
| Question | Can you answer it from a blend label? |
|---|---|
| What ingredients are in the product? | Yes, all of them must be listed |
| Which ingredient weighs the most? | Yes, it is listed first |
| What does the whole blend weigh? | Yes, the total must be printed |
| How much of ingredient one is there? | No |
| Is the top ingredient at a studied dose? | No |
| Is the last ingredient present in a meaningful amount? | No |
| Could one ingredient be 90% of the blend? | Yes, and you would not know |
About the product behind this blog
Cognizil is a once-daily liquid memory supplement: 7 mcg of chromium plus a 15.47 mg blend of 21 extracts and amino acids, with a 180-day money-back guarantee. We publish the dose gap as plainly as the price.
Add To CartRead the label firstWhy companies use blends, both reasons
The defensible reason is competition. A formula takes time and money to develop, and a full breakdown hands it to anyone who can read a label. Plenty of respectable manufacturers use blends for exactly this reason.
The other reason is less flattering. On a blend label, a trace of an expensive ingredient looks identical to a meaningful dose of it. The ingredient can be named on the front of the bottle, listed on the panel and present in an amount that could not possibly do anything. The industry nickname for this is fairy dusting.
From the outside you cannot tell which reason applies to any given product, and anyone who tells you they can is guessing.
What you can do is judge the total. A blend of 800 mg across six ingredients is a different proposition from a blend of 15 mg across twenty-one. The second is not necessarily useless, particularly with concentrated extracts, and it is certainly not matched to any published trial.
Four questions to ask before buying a blend
What am I actually paying for?
Sometimes it is the dose. Sometimes it is the format, the convenience or the guarantee. All of those can be worth money. Knowing which one you are buying is the point.
Is there a single-ingredient version?
If one ingredient is the reason you want the product, buy that ingredient on its own with a printed amount. It will cost less and you will be able to check it.
How long is the guarantee?
With a blend you cannot verify the dose, so the return terms are doing the work the label will not. A short window on a blend product is the worst combination available.
Our position on our own blend
Cognizil uses a proprietary blend, so everything above applies to it.
We have published the arithmetic rather than hiding from it. The blend is 15.47 mg. There are 21 ingredients. The extract ratios raise the raw plant equivalent to roughly 300 mg. Published single-herb trials used far more than that.
What we think you are actually buying is the format and the terms: one dropperful a day instead of a handful of capsules, and a 180-day money-back guarantee that is three times the category norm. Those are real and we are happy to sell them.
What you are not buying is a verified dose, and if that is the thing you care about, the honest answer is to buy a single-ingredient product with a printed amount instead. We would rather write that sentence than take money from someone who would have wanted it back.
The blend total is the number to write down
Not the ingredient count, which flatters a product, and not the front-of-bottle names, which are chosen for the label rather than for the dose. One figure, in milligrams, divided by the number of ingredients under it. If a page hides that total, or splits a formula into three blends so no single figure looks small, treat that as the answer to your question.
Three blends instead of one
If a label splits a formula into a focus blend, an energy blend and a clarity blend, add the three totals together before judging any of them. Splitting is a presentation choice, and it makes each number look larger relative to the ingredients sitting under it.