Guide
What a complete ingredient entry carries
Before you can ask how much of an ingredient is in a bottle, you have to know which ingredient it is. A complete entry prints five things, and each exists because leaving it out makes the row unverifiable in a specific way. On one row here, three of them are missing, and the result is unverifiable in a way that matters for safety.
Five columns: common name, species, plant part, preparation and standardisation, amount. On this product the first column is complete, the second is filled once in six, and the last three are largely or entirely blank. The row where that matters most is horse chestnut, because the words missing from it are the words a public health body uses to separate a preparation it calls unsafe from one it calls likely safe.
The five columns
An ingredient row is a claim about identity. These are the five pieces of it, in the order they matter to a reader trying to look something up.
| Column | What it does | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Common name | Tells you what to search for. | Nothing can be looked up at all. |
| Species | Fixes the plant. | Common names are shared between unrelated plants, so the research you find may be about something else. |
| Plant part | Says which tissue the material came from. | Different parts of a plant differ in chemistry; a monograph about one is not evidence about another. Occasionally the difference is a safety difference. |
| Preparation and standardisation | Says what was made from that tissue, and what fraction of it is the measured compound. | A weight of “extract” is a weight of unspecified concentrate, and two rows reading the same can differ by a factor of twenty. |
| Amount | Turns all the others into a dose. | Everything above becomes decoration. A perfectly identified ingredient at an unknown weight is still an unknown. |
Four of those five are about identity and one about quantity. This product does the reverse of what you would expect: the column most often skipped by cheap labels — the common name — is complete, and the three technical columns beneath it are empty.
Column one: the common name
This product names all six, which is worth saying first because it is not universal. Plenty of blends name three ingredients and close the list with a phrase, and there is nothing a reader can do with that.
Two of the six names go further than they had to. Curcumin is the measured compound of turmeric rather than the rhizome it comes from, and naming the compound is better practice than naming the plant and leaving the concentration open. Quercetin phytosome names a preparation type rather than just a flavonoid. Both are small, real disclosures.
One caveat applies to all six. None of these names is printed on the bottle. They appear in a marketing graphic, which can be redesigned without reprinting anything and carries no regulatory weight. A complete set of names in an advertisement is not a complete ingredient list. That distinction has a post of its own.
Column two: the species
One of the six carries a binomial: boswellia serrata. The other five do not.
A species name exists because common names are unreliable. They travel between languages, they attach to unrelated plants, and they are marketing property in a way a botanical name is not. A binomial is a key that opens a database; a common name is a phrase that might.
Where it is present it does real work. Because the name says serrata, NCCIH’s boswellia page is about the right tree, and its statement that “boswellia serrata extract in doses up to 1,000 mg daily has been safely used in several clinical trials” can be quoted without an argument about species. Where it is absent, the research is still findable under the common name, but nothing on the product confirms that the material in the bottle is the plant the research used.
Column three: the plant part
Not one of the six states a plant part. This is the column where this product does worst, and it is the column that carries the single most consequential omission on it.
The column exists because a plant is not chemically uniform. Root, rhizome, leaf, seed, bark, resin and flower are different tissues with different constituents, and research on one does not transfer to another without an argument. A reader who finds a monograph about a seed extract and applies it to a bark extract has changed the subject without noticing.
Usually that is a precision problem. On horse chestnut it is a safety problem, and the relevant public body says so in two consecutive sentences.
“The raw seeds, bark, flowers, and leaves of horse chestnut are unsafe when used orally because they contain a toxic component. Standardized horse chestnut seed extracts, from which this component has been removed, are likely safe for short-term use and have been used safely in research studies for up to 12 weeks.”
NCCIH — Horse Chestnut: Usefulness and Safety
Everything separating those sentences lives in three words: standardised, seed, extract. Two of the three are columns on this table, and this product prints neither. That is not evidence that the unsafe form is present, and this site has no basis for saying so. It is that the one distinction the relevant body draws cannot be checked from anything published, and with no panel there is no second document to check. It is finding 5, and the first question for the order desk.
Column four: preparation and standardisation
Two of the six name a preparation. Ginger extract says the material is an extract rather than a powdered root. Quercetin phytosome says the compound has been complexed with a phospholipid, usually to improve absorption. Both beat a bare name.
Neither carries the number that makes the word useful. An extract without a standardisation is a weight of unspecified concentrate: the same 100 mg could be mild or twenty times stronger. A phytosome is described by its complexation ratio — how much of the complex is the compound and how much phospholipid — so on the conditional reading that caps the row at 120 mg, the quercetin itself would be some unstated fraction of that.
No row here carries a standardisation or an extract ratio. For contrast, curcumin needs neither, because naming the compound is the specification — the one place on this product where the fourth column is effectively complete.
Standardisation and extract ratio are not the same thing
A standardisation — five per cent of the measured compound — describes the finished material: what fraction of the powder is the thing anybody studied. An extract ratio — 10:1 — describes the manufacturing: how much raw plant went in per part that came out. The first is the more useful. Neither substitutes for the other, and neither substitutes for a weight. This product prints none of the three.
Column five: the amount
None of six. The only quantity anywhere is a blend total of 600 mg a serving, printed in a marketing graphic rather than on a label.
Inside a proprietary blend the FDA does not require individual weights, so a label omitting them is following the rule rather than dodging it. What is different here is that there is no panel for the rule to apply to. On a panel it would cap the six at 600, 300, 200, 150, 120 and 100 mg; with no panel the printed order carries no guarantee, so those figures appear here only with the word if in front of them. The blend guide sets that out in full.
And there is a sixth column that only liquids have
On a liquid a serving size is a volume, and the directions here give one in droppers. A dropper is not a unit: across the plausible range a two-dropper serving is between 1.2 and 2.0 mL, which makes a 59 mL bottle last from 30 to 49 servings. Without that figure a buyer cannot work out a dose, a bottle duration, or whether a bottle finishes inside the 60-day return window. That has a post of its own.
All six rows, scored
| Ingredient | Name | Species | Part | Preparation | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boswellia Serrata | Yes | Yes | No — NCCIH names gum resin or bark | No | No — ceiling 600 mg if first |
| Curcumin | Yes | n/a — a compound | n/a | n/a — the compound is the specification | No — ceiling 300 mg |
| Horse Chestnut | Yes | No | No — the row that matters | No | No — ceiling 200 mg |
| Gotu Kola | Yes | No | No | No | No — ceiling 150 mg |
| Quercetin Phytosome | Yes | n/a — a compound | n/a | Partly — phytosome, no ratio | No — ceiling 120 mg |
| Ginger Extract | Yes | No | No | Partly — extract, no standardisation | No — ceiling 100 mg |
Names: complete. Species: one of six. Plant part: none. Preparation: two partial. Amount: none. Every ceiling in the last column is conditional on an order nothing guarantees, and the third column is where the argument on this product actually lives.
What to ask when a column is blank
- No species? Ask which one. Until you have it, treat research found under the common name as unconfirmed rather than as unrelated.
- No plant part? Ask which tissue the material came from, and whether the published research used the same one. On horse chestnut, ask this first and before anything else.
- No preparation? Ask whether the ingredient is an extract, a powder or a compound. “Herbal extracts” on a bottle front specifies nothing.
- No standardisation? Ask what the extract is standardised to, if anything, and what the ratio is — and for a phytosome, what the complexation ratio is.
- No amount? Compute the ceiling, then ask for the figure. A formulator can answer in a sentence; a call centre usually cannot.
- No panel at all? Ask for one, and ask separately whether the printed ingredient order is by weight. Those two answers between them would move most of this site from conditional to confirmed.
None of this requires expertise. It requires knowing what a complete row looks like, which is the whole content of this guide. The contact page sets out who to ask, and the batch page has the questions written out.
Ask for the panel, and ask about the horse chestnut
A 2 fl oz bottle of liquid drops, two droppers a day, and no Supplement Facts panel on anything supplied with it. The only quantity that exists — 600 mg of blend a serving — is printed in a marketing graphic. No price was supplied either; the live figure and the 60-day return terms are on the seller’s checkout screen.
60-day window · Questions first? Call +1 (302) 200-3480