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Interpreting a dietary supplement label

Many people simply look at the price of a bottle when determining what supplement to buy. Unfortunately, this is too simplistic of an approach when considering a health changing dietary supplement. Example: Do you know the amount of active ingredients per bottle or per dollar?

To determine this you need to look at the Supplement Facts box on the back of the bottle. At the top left you will see a serving size listed as x number of capsules, pills, tsp., etc. For Blue Ice Pure Cod Liver Oil you will see the serving size is 2 capsules. Below you will see the Amount Per Serving which says 5000 IU’s of Vitamin A. What this label states, is there is 5000 IU’s of Vitamin A per 2 capsules or 2500 IU’s per 1 capsule. This holds true for the other ingredients listed, such as Vitamin D, EPA and DHA.

On the front of the label, you will see the number of capsules or amount in a bottle and in the Supplement Facts box you will see the Servings Per Container. The Blue Ice Pure Cod Liver Oil contains 120 liquid capsules and 60 servings per container. For this product there are 60 servings listed because the serving size is 2 capsules.

This information must be used to determine the price per serving or price per active ingredients.

500 IU Vitamin D per serving x 60 servings = 30,000 IU Vitamin D per bottle

If the cost of the bottle is $26.25 then,

$26.25 / 30,000 IU = $0.000875/ IU Vitamin D

Now you can compare this number to the next product (assuming it is a quality product containing the label claimed ingredients) to determine the cost efficiency.

Amount of ingredients:

There are two standard ways of labeling the amount of the dietary supplement ingredients. Low quality companies will meet the label claim amounts at the time of manufacturing while high quality companies products meet the label claim at the time of the expiration date listed on the bottle. Therefore, at the time of manufacture, the higher quality companies have to put more ingredients into a supplement in order to meet this standard of label claim at expiration.

Expiration Date:

As stated above, at expiration, the better companies will meet the label claim amount at that time. This is the primary use of an expiration date on their supplements versus a food type expiration date (milk) which indicates the product has gone bad. It is important to note herbs and vitamins simply loose potency over time while oils may actually become rancid or oxidized. Minerals most likely will remain unchanged for long periods of time.