“NEW proprietary blend of organic herbs, vitamins, and minerals scientifically proven to {insert your choice of health goal}”. Sounds sexy, right? Proprietary blend. Mmm. Scientifically proven. Oh, yes, please.
When you see these terms on a dietary supplement, buying it almost feels like a no-brainer — it must be effective and, therefore, worth the eye-watering price tag, right?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but “scientifically proven” doesn’t mean anything (we dive into why that’s so in this article). And, unfortunately, a dietary supplement featuring a “proprietary blend” is likely to be as effective as a cup of water in snuffing out a raging forest fire. Useless.
Continue reading to understand why.
Proprietary Blend 101
While the FDA does not have legal purview over the approval of dietary supplements sold in the United States, it does require manufacturers to disclose the following information:
- Every dietary ingredient
- Amount of every dietary ingredient per serving (declared as a quantitative amount by weight, a percentage of the Daily Value, or both)
That means, technically, you, the consumer, will always know how much of a given active ingredient you’ll get in a supplement.
Well, unless those ingredients are part of a proprietary blend.
What’s that? A proprietary blend (also known as "complex", "matrix", or "formulation") is a cocktail of several ingredients often unique to a particular product and sometimes given a special name on the product's Supplements Facts panel.
(Fictitious) examples include “Bye-Bye Bloating Complex”, “Metabolism-Boosting Formulation”, and “Laser-Sharp Focus Matrix”.
As seductive as these may sound, there's a catch: manufacturers don't have to list the specific amount of each ingredient in proprietary blends; they're only obliged to disclose the total combined amount in the blend.
So, all you’ll know about a “Bye-Bye Bloating Complex", for example, could be:
Ingredients:
- Fermented fruits and vegetables
- Vitamin C
- Digestion enzymes
Total Amount Per Serving: 2,070 mg
How much fermented fruits and vegetables are you getting? What about vitamin C? Or digestion enzymes? Too bad — you’ll never know.
How Does a Proprietary Blend Benefit You?
Give it careful thought, and, chances are, you’ll come to this conclusion: it doesn’t.
Proprietary blends only serve to protect the interests of supplement companies. By keeping their exact formulas secret, supplement companies can keep competitors, store brands, and counterfeiters at bay.
That’s great for them (and their bottom lines). But for you, the consumer?
Not so much. You're kept in the dark about how much of each ingredient you're getting in these "proprietary blends".
After all, as we all know, the effectiveness of an ingredient often comes down to its dose; if you're getting only 10 mg of magnesium in a supplement, it'll hardly impact your energy levels.
Are Supplement Companies Lying About Their Proprietary Blends?
(Probably.)
Worse still, when it comes to proprietary blends, barely-there serving sizes are the least of your concerns.
Of course, it's terrible that some supplement companies overcharge for paltry amounts of active ingredients. But at least they do include those ingredients in their formulations. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for other scrupulous, fly-by-night companies that list non-existent ingredients on their proprietary blends.
Or, worse, add health-harming ingredients to their formulas. This isn't just a theory, by the way. It's happening in real-life — and validated by a large body of research on various dietary supplements.
Take this 2018 study on nearly 800 dietary supplements published in JAMA Network Open, for instance.
Shockingly, the researchers found more than one unapproved pharmaceutical ingredient (e.g., sibutramine, which is linked with an increased risk for heart attacks and strokes) in 20% of those supplements. Twenty percent! That’s a fifth of all studied supplements.
What Now, Then?
Stop paying for proprietary blends. Also, unless you plan on sending every supplement for lab testing, you probably shouldn't trust the bulk of dietary supplements available too.
What now? What if you’d still like to optimize your health?
Today, you don't have to rely on supplement companies to care for your body holistically. There are tons of scientific resources available on which ingredients work for a particular health goal — and how much of them you'd need.
You can essentially "reverse-engineer" most supplements out there. Better still, you can ensure you include active ingredients at a dose that truly works while leaving out questionable, harmful "contaminants".
How? We guide you through the process in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manner in this comprehensive "Do-It-Yourself Supplement Guide for Beginners”.
