The Thirty-Second Verdict on Any Supplement

You do not need to understand chemistry to eliminate most supplements from consideration. You need four checks and about thirty seconds.

Check one: does the label match the advertising?

Read the advertised ingredient list, then read the Supplement Facts panel. Every ingredient promoted should appear on the panel.

If any is missing, stop there. Nothing else on that page can be trusted either, and no amount of good formulation elsewhere fixes it.

Check two: is there a standardisation percentage?

Look for a figure in brackets after each extract name — "(95% curcuminoids)", "(20% forskolin)". That is what lets you know how much active compound you are getting.

Ratios like 4:1 describe manufacturing rather than contents and cannot be converted. No percentage at all means the amount is unknowable.

Check three: does the dose match the research?

Multiply extract weight by percentage by servings per day. Compare that against what studies on the ingredient actually used.

This single check eliminates most products, because most supply a fraction of studied amounts.

Check four: what is the capsule made of?

In the "other ingredients" line below the panel. Gelatin is animal-derived. Allergens live here too. It takes two seconds and it is the line most people never read.

What the method does not tell you

Whether the ingredient works. That is a separate argument about evidence, and reasonable people land differently on it. The method tells you whether a given product is a sensible way to buy the ingredient — which is a narrower question and the one you can actually answer from a label.