How to Read a 200 mg Proprietary Blend, Using Glyco Harmony as the Example

A proprietary blend is a set of ingredients grouped under one name and one total weight. The label names every ingredient in the set. It does not have to say how much of each one is there.

Glyco Harmony has one blend, printed as "Proprietary Blend 200 mg" per 1 ml serving. It holds 22 ingredients, from maca root at the top to L-carnitine at the bottom. Above it sits the only individual amount on the panel: chromium, 0.7 mcg.

The FDA rule for supplement labels is 21 CFR 101.36. For a blend, it asks for two things and leaves out a third (21 CFR 101.36).

The total weight

The label must show the combined weight of the whole blend per serving. For Glyco Harmony, that is 200 mg in each 1 ml dropper.

Order by weight

The ingredients must appear from the most by weight to the least. That rule is what makes the ceiling math possible.

What is not required

The label does not need to show each ingredient's weight. It also does not need to state extract strength, such as a ratio or a percent of an active compound.

The ceiling math rests on one idea. Every ingredient above a given spot weighs at least as much as the one in that spot. So the Nth ingredient can weigh no more than the total divided by N.

A worked example

Take African mango, fourth in the list. Suppose it weighed 60 mg. Then the three ingredients above it would each weigh at least 60 mg too. That makes at least 240 mg, more than the 200 mg blend. So African mango must be 50 mg or less.

Here is the math for every ingredient in the Glyco Harmony blend, in label order. The last column doubles each ceiling for people who take 2 droppers a day.

Twenty-two ingredients sharing 200 mg leaves little room for each. If the blend were split evenly, each would get about 9 mg. It is not split evenly, because the list runs from heaviest to lightest.

The one floor you can calculate

The first ingredient must be at least the average, or it could not be the heaviest. So maca weighs at least 200 ÷ 22, about 9.1 mg, and at most 200 mg. No other ingredient has a floor you can work out.

One split that fits the label

Here is a made-up example. Maca 60 mg, grape seed 30 mg, guarana 20 mg, African mango 15 mg, and the other 18 ingredients sharing the last 75 mg. It keeps the order and adds up to 200 mg. Many other splits would fit just as well.

Extract strength is missing

Most blend items are extracts. The label does not say how concentrated they are. Even a known weight would not reveal the amount of active compounds.

Set against the doses used in human studies, every ceiling falls short. The table compares the most each ingredient can be per dropper with the daily amounts trials used.

The whole 200 mg blend is smaller than one 400 mg gymnema dose. Our post on what gymnema and chromium research says looks at those trials in detail.

Brands say blends protect a formula from copycats, since exact amounts are never printed. That is a real business reason. The cost falls on buyers, who cannot match each ingredient to the research.

That is why our buyer's checklist gives fewer points to formulas that keep more inside a blend.

The same method works on any supplement with a blend. Keep the bottle in hand and a pen nearby.

A neat label does not rule out a hidden drug. The FDA has found hidden drug ingredients in illegally sold diabetes products (FDA, illegally sold diabetes treatments). Buy from the authorized seller and read the safety notes before you start.