Short version: The front of the bottle is an ad. The truth is on the back, in two places: the Supplement Facts panel and the "Other Ingredients" line. Learn to read those two and you can judge almost any product on a shelf in under a minute. Ours included.
Most supplements aren't scams in the obvious sense. They're worse: technically accurate. The label is true. It's just built to be misread. Here's how to read it on purpose.
1. Turn it over before you do anything else
The front exists to make you feel something. "Clinically studied," "advanced formula," a photo of a mountain. None of it is binding. Flip to the back. If a brand clearly worked harder on the front than the panel, that tells you where their effort went.
2. Find the real dose, not the serving-size version
Look at "Serving Size" first. A label can advertise an impressive number per serving and then quietly define a serving as four capsules, or two scoops, or a pill the size of your thumb. Do the division. The number that matters is what's in one capsule or one scoop, multiplied by how many you'll actually take in a day.
3. Check the dose against what actually does something
This is the whole game. An ingredient can be present, named, and still useless because there isn't enough of it to matter. Creatine works at around 5 grams a day, so a gummy with 1 gram is a candy with a marketing budget. Magnesium is sold by the weight of the whole compound, but your body only uses the elemental portion, which is a fraction of the number on the front.
The "% Daily Value" column won't save you. It only exists for a short list of established nutrients, and even then it speaks to deficiency, not to whether the dose does the thing you bought it for. For most of the interesting ingredients there's no %DV at all, and you're on your own. The fix is simple but unglamorous: look up the studied dose, then hold the panel against it.
4. Treat "Proprietary Blend" as a confession
If you see "Proprietary Blend, 750 mg" with a list of ingredients under it and no individual amounts, the brand is telling you something. By law the ingredients are listed in order of weight, so you know the first one is the biggest share and the last one is a rounding error. You don't know any of the actual numbers. The pitch is that they're protecting a secret formula. The reality is usually that a cheap, heavy filler sits first and the expensive, useful stuff is a dusting at the end, and the blend exists to hide exactly that. A formula worth having is one they'll show you.
5. Read the "Other Ingredients" line, where the fillers live
Everything not doing active work shows up here. Some of it is fine. Some of it is there to cut cost. Knowing which is which keeps you from getting fooled and from getting scared, and the second one matters as much as the first.
- Maltodextrin — a cheap carbohydrate used to bulk out a scoop so it looks like more product. Usually a tell that they're padding.
- Magnesium stearate / stearic acid — a flow agent that keeps the manufacturing equipment from jamming. The internet treats it like poison; the evidence says it's inert at the amounts used. Not worth fearing, worth noticing.
- Silicon dioxide — anti-caking agent. Benign and common.
- Titanium dioxide — a whitener that does nothing for you and is increasingly restricted in food. No reason to want it in your supplement.
- "Natural flavors" — a legal catch-all that can cover a lot of ground. Harmless if the flavors are simple and singular (lemon, lime, etc) but a little more complicated if they're complex (raspberry snow cone sundae or some such gibberish.)
The point isn't that fillers are evil. It's that every line should have a reason, and "it was cheaper for us" is a reason you're allowed to reject.
6. Form matters as much as amount
Two products can list the same ingredient at the same number and behave completely differently. Magnesium glycinate absorbs well and is easy on the gut; magnesium oxide is cheap and mostly passes through you. Words like "chelated" or "amino acid bound" usually point to a more absorbable form, which is part of why those products cost more. Same dose, different result. The form is half the answer.
7. Know what the certifications actually promise
- GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) — covers how it was made: clean facility, consistent process, traceable batches. It does not promise the formula is good or the doses are real. A useless product can be made under perfect GMP.
- Third-party tested — only as strong as the lab behind it, and only meaningful if you can see the result. The real signal is whether the brand will hand you a Certificate of Analysis (COA) when you ask.
- NSF Certified for Sport / Informed Sport — matters if you get drug tested for work or competition. Otherwise a nice-to-have, not a deal-breaker.
The one-minute version
- Flip to the back.
- Divide to find the per-unit dose.
- Compare it to the studied dose.
- Treat proprietary blends as a red flag.
- Scan "Other Ingredients" for cost-cutting filler.
- Check the form, not just the number.
- Ask whether they'll show you a COA.
The Cohld take
We built the Cohld Standard around this exact method, so the honest thing to do is invite you to use it on us. Turn our bottles over. The doses are real and printed, the proprietary blends don't exist, and the "Other Ingredients" line is short on purpose. The day we fail this test, you'll be able to see it as plainly as anyone else. That's the point of writing it down.
