A proprietary blend has to declare the combined weight of everything in it. It does not have to declare how much of each ingredient is in there. Ingredients should be listed in descending order by weight, which is the only clue you get. So a 2,000 mg blend with eleven ingredients could be 1,900 mg of the cheapest one and trace amounts of the ten that sold you the bottle. The famous ingredient goes on the front; the amount stays hidden. There is one legitimate reason to use a blend and a lot of illegitimate ones. You cannot tell which you are holding, and that is the point. Find a label with a proprietary blend on it. How many ingredients are sharing that one number?

Live cultures die over shelf life. A product declaring 50 billion CFU at time of manufacture is telling you what was in there when it left the factory, not what is in there now. A product declaring 10 billion guaranteed through the expiration date is making the harder promise, and the harder promise is worth more. ISAPP, the scientific association for probiotics, says potency should be listed through the expiration date for exactly this reason. Second thing while you have it in your hand. A strain needs three parts: genus, species, and the strain code — the letters and numbers on the end. Without the code you cannot tie what you bought to any trial, because two strains with the same species name can behave completely differently. Go and look at yours. Does it say at manufacture or through expiry, and does it give you the strain codes?

Pick up the tub and find the serving size, not the protein number. On a lot of products one serving is two scoops. So the “25g protein per serving” on the front is two scoops of powder. If you have been using one, you have been getting half of what you think, and the tub is lasting twice as long as the label says it should — which is the tell. This is the cheapest mistake in the category, and it is not a scam. The number is accurate. It is just not the number most people read. Go and look. How many scoops is one serving on yours, and how many do you actually use?

Labels moved from IU to mcg. If yours now reads 25 mcg and you remember buying 1000 IU, nothing was reduced. Those are the same dose. 1000 IU is 25 mcg. 2000 IU is 50 mcg. 5000 IU is 125 mcg. The practical problem is that 25 looks like almost nothing next to 1000, so people see the small number, assume it is a low-dose product, and buy something stronger than they meant to. If your bottle is in mcg and you want to think in IU, multiply by 40. What does yours say, and did you notice when it changed?

Most people track a daily protein number and never look at the meals. The meals matter: muscle building responds meal by meal, and each meal needs enough protein and roughly 2.5 g of leucine to switch it on. Oats with milk comes to 13 g of protein and 1.2 g of leucine. A 4 oz chicken breast with a cup of rice comes to 39 g and 3 g. Same meal slot, very different job done. For anyone training seriously, the target in my performance book is about 1 g of protein per pound of body weight a day. For a 180 lb lifter eating four meals, that is about 45 g a meal. I built a free plate builder that shows protein, leucine and all nine essential amino acids for any meal you put together: danieledlund.com/tools/protein-plate/ Put in what you ate for breakfast today. How many grams of protein and leucine did it come to?