Proprietary blends: what the label is not telling you

A proprietary blend lists several ingredients under one combined total, so you learn what is in the product but not how much of each. It is legal, it is common, and it is the most effective way a compliant label can tell you less than it appears to.

How it works

Instead of listing each ingredient with its own amount, the panel shows a blend name and a single figure. A blend at 500 mg containing five ingredients could be 460 mg of the cheapest one and 10 mg each of the rest. The label is accurate either way, and you cannot tell which from the panel.

The one rule that helps you

Ingredients within a blend must be listed in descending order by weight. So the first-named ingredient is present in the largest amount and the last in the smallest. That will not give you numbers, but it does tell you the ordering — and if the ingredient the marketing is built around appears last in the blend, that is informative.

Why companies use them

The stated reason is protecting a formula from being copied. Sometimes that is genuine. More often, full disclosure would show that headline ingredients are present well below the amounts used in the research that made them famous — an amount often described as a fairy dusting, where an ingredient is present enough to name but not enough to matter.

When a blend is not a dealbreaker

If the blend is a minor part of a formula whose main ingredients are individually disclosed, it is a small concern. If everything meaningful is inside the blend, you are buying on trust alone.

The version that is harder still

Occasionally there is no published panel at all before purchase. That is a step beyond a proprietary blend: with a blend you at least know the ingredient names and their relative ordering. With no panel you know neither until the bottle arrives.

That is the situation with the product this site covers, and we say so on its ingredients page rather than filling the gap with something plausible. It is the main reason our review stops short of a strong recommendation.

What to do about it

• Read the panel before buying wherever one is published, and check whether amounts are individual or combined.
• Note the ordering inside any blend, and compare it against what the marketing emphasises.
• Where no panel is available, treat the purchase as provisional and read the label the day it arrives.
• If you take medication, do not skip the pharmacist conversation — our question list makes it a two-minute job.

Our guide to reading a Supplement Facts panel covers the rest of what the box is telling you.