Label literacy
Named Is Not Disclosed: The Transparency Trick
“Eleven named botanicals, nothing hidden” sounds like transparency. Listing every ingredient is the legal minimum. Here is the difference. 🔍
Key takeaways
- Naming every ingredient is legally required, not a transparency choice.
- Real disclosure = ingredient + standardisation + milligrams.
- Non-disclosure matters more when the ingredients are good.
- Descending weight order is the one clue a blend still gives you.
What the law already requires
Under US dietary supplement labelling rules a manufacturer must list every component of a blend by name, in descending order of weight, and give the total weight of the blend. Naming is not optional. It is the floor.
What is optional is the individual amount of each component. A label may declare “Proprietary Blend, 800 mg” followed by a list of names and satisfy the rule completely. The regulator’s own overview of supplement labelling is at FDA Dietary Supplements.
So what is a transparency claim worth?
When a label says “all ingredients named, nothing hidden,” it is describing compliance. It is the equivalent of a restaurant advertising that it washes its hands.
Real disclosure looks different. It looks like: Horse chestnut seed extract (standardised to 20% aescin) — 300 mg. Three facts: what it is, how potent, how much. That is what you need to compare a product to published research, and it is precisely what a blend withholds.
Naming tells you what is in the bottle. Disclosing tells you whether it will do anything. Only one of those is optional, which is why only one of them is a signal.
Why it bites hardest on good formulas 🌿
Here is the uncomfortable part. Non-disclosure matters more when a formula contains genuinely good ingredients, not less.
If a blend is made of herbs with no research behind them, the amounts barely matter — there is no benchmark to miss. But when a formula contains an ingredient with a known effective dose, the missing number becomes the only thing standing between you and an informed decision. You know what good looks like. You just cannot tell whether you are getting it.
Lymph Savior is exactly that case. Horse chestnut has a researched dose of roughly 300 mg of standardised extract twice daily. Centella asiatica has one around 60–120 mg of standardised triterpenes daily. Both are checkable. Neither is printed.
Five tells that separate disclosure from marketing 🔍
- Individual milligram figures next to each ingredient, not one blend total.
- Standardisation percentages — “standardised to 20% aescin” rather than a bare plant name. See what standardisation actually means.
- The plant part named — seed, leaf, root and aerial parts are chemically different products.
- A dosing schedule matching the research — if trials split a dose twice daily and the product is once daily, note it.
- A short ingredient list. A product built around two herbs at real doses tends to say so. Eleven names in two capsules is a different kind of product.
When a label will not tell you, you have three honest options: buy a disclosed product instead, buy the single ingredient at a known dose, or buy the blend and treat the refund window as the real guarantee. Assuming the amounts are fine because the names are printed is not one of them. 🔁