Proprietary Blends: Why You Can’t Tell What’s In the Bottle

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A proprietary blend gives you one number for several ingredients. “Focus Matrix, 750 mg.” What’s inside that 750 mg, and in what amounts, you are not told, and there is no way for you to find out.

What is in itWhat a blend tells you, and what it hidesA worked example: "Focus Matrix, 600 mg" with 4 ingredients listed inside it.

1. Rice flour—
2. L-theanine—
3. Bacopa monnieri—
4. Huperzine A—

600 mg total, and that is the only number you get

That’s not a technicality. It means the dose check I run on every product on this site is impossible. I can’t tell you whether the bacopa in there is at the trial dose or whether there are 4 grains of it, and neither can the company’s own marketing page, because it never says.

My position: a blend is a no by default. But I’ll give you the one real argument in their favour too, because it exists and most articles pretend it doesn’t. Here’s what’s on this page:

What the label rules do and don’t force a company to tell you
The ordering trick, and how to read it
Fairy dusting, and the specific shape it takes
The serving-size manoeuvre that makes a thin formula look generous
The honest case for blends
A rule you can apply standing in a shop

What the rules actually require

US labelling rules are less protective than people assume, but they’re not nothing, and the bit they do give you is genuinely useful once you know it’s there.

A company using a blend has to do 2 things. It has to give the total weight of the blend. And it has to list the ingredients inside it in descending order by weight.

That second one is the crack of light. The order is not decorative. Whatever is printed first is the heaviest thing in there, and whatever is printed last is the lightest. You can’t get numbers out of it, but you can get a ranking, and a ranking is often enough to make the decision.

READ: My top 3 best nootropic supplements, with every dose checked

How to read the order

Take a blend listed as: rice flour, L-theanine, bacopa monnieri, huperzine A. Total 600 mg.

Rice flour is first, so rice flour is the single heaviest component. It’s a filler. You are buying a capsule that is mostly filler by weight, and the label told you so without ever saying a number.

Now flip it. If the first item is the ingredient you’re actually buying it for, that’s a decent sign. Not proof, because “heaviest of 6” could still be 200 mg out of 600 mg, and the trial you read might have used 300 mg. But it’s information, and it’s free.

The arithmetic is worth doing out loud once. If a 600 mg blend has 6 ingredients and the last 3 are there in any meaningful amount, the first one cannot be at a full clinical dose. There isn’t room in the capsule. That’s not cynicism, it’s addition.

Fairy dusting

This is the practice the whole blend format enables, and once you’ve seen the shape you’ll spot it everywhere.

A company wants to put a famous, well-studied ingredient on the front of the box. Lion’s mane, say. The trials used 2 to 3 grams. At that dose it would dominate the capsule and cost real money. So it goes in the blend, near the end of the list, at whatever amount is cheap, and the front of the box still says lion’s mane in large letters.

Everything on that label is true. The ingredient is present. The order is correct. The total is accurate. And the product does nothing, because a trace of a studied ingredient is not a studied dose. That’s the whole trick, and it’s legal.

My rule of thumb after a few years of this: the more impressive the ingredient list on the front, the more suspicious I am of a blend on the back. 12 famous ingredients in one 700 mg blend is not a formula, it’s a search-engine strategy.

Which oneThe rule, standing in a shopThirty seconds, a bottle in your hand.

The serving-size manoeuvre

Separate trick, often stacked on top of the first one, and it catches people who are otherwise careful.

The panel says the blend is 900 mg. That reads generously. Then you look up 2 lines and the serving size is 3 capsules. So it’s 300 mg per capsule, and a 90-capsule bottle is 30 servings, not 90. The bottle that looked like a 3-month supply is a month.

Always read the serving size before the amounts. It reframes every number underneath it, and it’s the most common way a label misleads without lying. Cost per serving is the only price that means anything here, and the sticker price is nearly useless on its own.

READ: Nootropic doses vs. what the studies actually used

The honest case for blends

I said I’d give it, so here it is, and it isn’t stupid.

Supplement formulas have no patent protection worth anything. Publish your exact ratios and a competitor can clone you in a month, undercut you, and spend nothing on the work that found the ratios. If a company genuinely did the research to land on a specific combination, a blend is the only thing stopping the copy.

That’s a real business problem. I just don’t think it’s your problem. You’re the one swallowing it and paying for it, and “trust us” is a lot to ask when the same format is the industry’s favourite hiding place. The companies I rate solved this by publishing everything and competing on quality instead, which turns out to be possible.

At a glanceThe serving-size manoeuvreThe same bottle, read properly.

900 mgblend size on the panel, which reads generously

3capsules per serving, printed 2 lines above it

300 mgwhat you actually get per capsule

30servings in a 90-capsule bottle, not 90

The rule, standing in a shop

You’ve got 30 seconds and a bottle in your hand. Do this.

Serving size first. How many capsules, and how many servings in the bottle?
Scan for the words proprietary blend. If they’re absent and every ingredient has its own number, good, go and check those numbers against the studies.
If they’re present, find the ingredient you’re buying it for. Is it first in the blend, or last?
Last, or anywhere near the end, put it down.
First, and there are only 2 or 3 things in the blend, it’s defensible. First, in a blend of 10, is not.

That’s it. It costs you half a minute and it’s the difference between buying a formula and buying a label.

Conclusion

A proprietary blend isn’t automatically a scam, but it removes the one check that separates a real formula from an expensive one, and it removes it on purpose. When a company can show you its numbers and chooses not to, that choice is the information.

I buy fully disclosed formulas. Not because blends never work, but because with a blend I can’t tell, and I’ve spent enough money finding out the slow way. Read the order, read the serving size, and let most of the shelf go.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t run a lab. I read labels and keep notes, and I bought it myself every time. If you’re on medication, ask a pharmacist first.

Questions in the comments. That would be it folks!