A label that hides nothing, and why that is rarer than it should be

Exhibit 01

Ten declared things, and ten printed amounts

Start with the thing easiest to overlook, because it looks like the default. Every line on this panel carries its own number.

Serving Size 2 Capsules · Servings Per Container 30 · ** Daily Value (DV) not established.

That is not how most panels of this kind read. A proprietary blend lets a label print one weight and indent several names beneath it, and it is lawful: the only quantitative fact left is the declaration order, from which a maximum can be derived and an amount cannot. The blend guide runs that arithmetic over the six lines above as a demonstration.

This panel carries no proprietary blend. No group of ingredients shares one declared weight, so every amount on this site is the manufacturer’s own printed figure and none had to be derived from a declaration order. So no sentence here needs the words at most. The ingredients page gives each of the ten declared things its printed figure, the label page prints the panel line for line, and the credit is for a decision about disclosure taken before anybody outside the company could ask about it.

Exhibit 02

The symbol convention, used the way the regulation describes it

Below the percentage lines the weights carry on and the percentage column goes blank, and what fills that blank is the second thing this label gets right.

21 CFR 101.36 asks that “Other dietary ingredients shall bear a symbol (e.g., an asterisk) in the column under the heading of “% Daily Value”” ^{21 CFR 101.36} This panel carries a double asterisk against all six lines with no established Daily Value, and prints the footnote directly underneath them: ** Daily Value (DV) not established.

Three small things are correct at once. The mark is present on every line that needs one, which sounds trivial until you meet a panel where it is on some of them. The footnote is printed on the same panel rather than left to a website. And the mark is a double asterisk throughout.

What it does not mean is the part readers get wrong. It says the reference table has no entry, so no percentage is calculable. The weight is the information, and here the weights run from 400 mg down to 25 mg.

Exhibit 03

The folate line, which takes real care to get right

This is the line a careless label gets backwards, and the one place on this panel where somebody plainly knew what they were doing.

Three numbers about one ingredient, and they have to agree through a factor the regulation sets out in a footnote rather than in the table. Footnote 7 to the table at 21 CFR 101.9(c)(8)(iv) reads: “DFE = Dietary Folate Equivalents; 1 DFE = 1 mcg naturally occurring folate = 0.6 mcg folic acid.” ^{21 CFR 101.9}

So the conversion is a division, and that is the step a careless label reverses, because multiplying by 0.6 produces a very different number. 230 divided by 0.6 is 383.33, and to the whole microgram 383 mcg DFE. Then 383 mcg DFE against the 400 mcg DFE Daily Value is 95.75%, which rounds to 96%, and the panel prints 96%.

• The parenthetical is the harder half. A label may print a folate figure in DFE and say nothing about the form behind it. This one names the form and its weight, which makes the conversion checkable from outside.
• The rounding went the right way. 383.33 to the whole microgram is 383, not 384.
• And the percentage is awkward. 95.75% rounds to 96%, which reads worse than a round figure and was printed anyway.

Both halves are right, and the second only because the first was. No page on this site presents the folate line as an error, and that is here because a reader arriving from a post about a different line deserves to know where the finding stops.

Exhibit 04

What a printed amount actually buys a reader

Openness is not a virtue in the abstract. It changes the questions that can be asked, and here it turns three lines from guesses into comparisons.

Read the middle row carefully. Benfotiamine is printed at 150 mg, and that sits inside a range a federal source publishes for this condition. NIH ODS reports: “Three studies found that, compared to placebo, 120–900 mg/day benfotiamine with or without other B-vitamins decreased the severity of neuropathy symptoms” ^{NIH ODS} The same paragraph asks for better evidence: “Well-designed studies with larger sample sizes and longer durations are required” ^{NIH ODS} Both halves are quoted because either alone misleads.

The other two run the other way and are published just as plainly. Alpha Lipoic Acid at 400 mg is below the 600 mg a day NCCIH describes, and its conclusion carries a hedge: “3 studies found improvements in symptoms, and 5 studies did not.” ^NCCIH Acetyl L-Carnitine at 50 mg is far below 1 to 3 grams a day, which are doses for trials in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias rather than for nerves.

None of those three sentences could be written about an ingredient inside a blend: the honest form of each would be a maximum. The ingredients page takes all ten declared things one at a time, including the six nobody addresses.

Exhibit 05

Open is not the same as right

A post that stopped here would be an advertisement with footnotes. Two things follow the credit, and both belong on the same page as it.

The first is that this panel still has one line that cannot be correct. Vitamin B6 (as Pyridoxine hydrochloride) is printed at 1.7 mcg with 100%, and the Daily Value FDA publishes for vitamin B6 is 1.7 mg, in milligrams. One thousandth of that is 0.1%, which rounds to 0%. Disclosure and accuracy are different properties, and this label demonstrates the difference on its own panel.

The second is that openness about the formula has not been matched elsewhere. Both facts are published here. The panel is transcribed in full; the price and the guarantee are not published and this site prints no figure for either.

So the fair summary is two sentences. It discloses more than it had to about what is in the capsule, with the symbol convention and the hardest conversion both done properly. And it prints one unit that cannot be right, behind a sales page that publishes neither a price nor a term.

No published trial on this formula was supplied, and none appears in any source this desk opened. Every source cited on this site describes one named ingredient, a category it sits in, or a labelling regulation. That is a different thing from a result measured on this capsule.