Label literacy

Eighty-Two Milligrams, Nine Names: How To Read A Proprietary Blend

Most blended supplements print a list of names and a single total. This bottle prints a total, a second number explaining what the first one means, and one amount inside the blend. Reading those three figures properly takes about two minutes, and it will tell you more about any botanical product than the whole front of the label.

By Jelly Force Team · Last updated September 21, 2026 · 8 min read · Label literacy · Reviewed by Dr. Lindsay Ogle

Three numbers, and what each one is

The front of the Jelly Force bottle carries a single quantity. Across the crimson band, in the largest type on the label after the wordmark, it says 82 MG Per Serving, with a footnote beneath: equivalent to approximately 567 mg of dry powders.

Turn the bottle round and the Supplement Facts panel explains the 82 mg. It is a Proprietary Blend, the same footnote hangs off it, and nine names sit underneath it: muira puama, maca, catuaba, green tea extract, caffeine, ashwagandha, L-arginine, tribulus and horny goat weed. One of them carries its own figure. Caffeine is printed as 5 mg.

That is more than a lot of this shelf gives you: plenty of blended products print names and the word proprietary with no weight at all.

What it has not given you is how the other eight names divide the remaining 77 mg. A fair amount can still be concluded honestly from what is printed, and there is a clear line where the printed figures stop.

What an extract ratio actually is

The two blend numbers on this label describe the same material at two stages of its life. 567 mg is the raw side: dried root, bark and leaf, weighed before anything is done to it. 82 mg is what is left after extraction.

Extraction is a soaking and a concentration. A manufacturer takes the dried plant, pulls out the soluble fraction with water or alcohol, discards the fibre and the insoluble bulk, and dries what remains. The powder that comes out weighs far less and carries a larger share of whatever the plant's active chemistry is.

Divide one by the other and you get roughly seven to one. That is an ordinary strength for a botanical extract, neither impressive nor suspicious. What it means practically is that one gummy carries the extractable fraction of about 567 mg of mixed dried material, and that is the more generous of the two figures when you come to compare it with anything. Caffeine is the exception: a single compound, so its 5 mg is a plain weight.

What happens when one number has to cover nine names

A single total across several ingredients is an upper bound on each of them, and nothing more. No name on that panel can exceed 82 mg, because that is all there is, and once the caffeine's 5 mg is taken out no other name can exceed 77 mg.

It is tempting to divide by nine and print the result. It is also wrong, and worth explaining why. Blends are almost never even. The cheapest and bulkiest input usually carries most of the weight, because that is what makes a formula affordable, and the ingredient the marketing leads on is often present in a small quantity. An even split is not a conservative estimate; it is an assumption dressed up as one.

So the honest reading of a blend is a range for each name. For most proprietary blends that range runs from almost nothing to the whole total. On this panel, as the next section shows, the order of the names narrows it a good deal.

The middle column is what a careless page prints. The right-hand column is why.

The order of the names is a clue

On a seller's graphic, the order of the names is a design choice. On a Supplement Facts panel it is not. The federal rule for proprietary blends requires the ingredients inside one to be declared in descending order of predominance by weight: heaviest first, lightest last.

Put that beside the one amount the panel prints. Caffeine sits fifth, at 5 mg. If this panel follows the rule, then muira puama, maca, catuaba and green tea extract, printed above it, weigh at least 5 mg each. And ashwagandha, L-arginine, tribulus and horny goat weed, printed below it, weigh 5 mg or less each.

That is worth a second look, because the four names below the caffeine include three of the four on this bottle with positive controlled trials: ashwagandha, arginine and tribulus. Maca, second, is the exception. For most of the panel, the weight of the blend and the weight of the evidence run in opposite directions.

Two cautions keep that reading honest. It is only as good as the label's compliance with the rule, and nobody has assayed this gummy to check. So it is a ceiling read from the printed order, not a measurement, and it should never be quoted as one.

The amounts the research actually used

Every positive result behind the names on this bottle was bought with a specific daily dose, and the doses are large. This is where the comparison becomes uncomfortable, so it is worth being precise rather than rhetorical about it.

Every figure in the middle column was read from the trial record rather than recalled. The lowest of them is 675 mg of one ingredient.

Set those against a bottle delivering an 82 mg blend, about 567 mg dry-powder equivalent, across all nine names. Even the most generous reading — the whole 567 mg being a single ingredient, which it is not — would not reach the ashwagandha dose, let alone the maca, arginine or tribulus ones. If the order rule holds, the ashwagandha, arginine and tribulus are each 5 mg or less.

That gap is not unique to this product, and it is not a scandal. It is close to the definition of a blended botanical supplement in a chewable format. An audit published in Nutrients in 2023 scored marketed erectile-dysfunction supplements against the minimum effective daily dose of each of their own named ingredients, across a whole market, and almost none of the products examined cleared it.

What would be unfair to conclude from all of this

Three things, and they matter because the arithmetic above is easy to over-read.

It does not follow that nothing happens. An untested product is untested in both directions, and the honest position is that nobody has measured this gummy. What follows is that anyone buying it on the strength of the maca trials is buying a name rather than a dose, and is entitled to know that before paying.

It does not follow that the panel is hiding something. A blend weight, a dry-powder equivalent and a caffeine figure are more disclosure than much of the shelf offers. The shortfall on this bottle is in the advertising, which names five of the nine.

And it does not follow that a smaller number is a worse product for every buyer. The thing a gummy does better than a capsule is get taken, and a supplement nobody takes delivers zero milligrams of everything.

• What is certain: an 82 mg blend a serving, about 567 mg dry-powder equivalent, nine names, 5 mg of caffeine.
• What the order implies: if the rule is followed, the four names below the caffeine weigh 5 mg or less each.
• What is unknown: how the other 77 mg divide, the standardisation, and what the finished gummy contains when assayed.
• What is unknowable from the label alone: whether any of it matters at this scale.

How to read any blended label in ninety seconds

The method works on any botanical product, not just this one.

1. Find the quantity, if there is one. A total, a blend weight, or nothing. If there is nothing, you are comparing names rather than products.
2. Look for a second number. A dry-powder equivalent or an extract ratio tells you which side of the extraction the first number describes.
3. Count the names sharing it, and read their order. Divide nothing. On a US panel the names in a blend run heaviest first, so a name near the bottom of a long list is a small share of it.
4. Look for any single amount inside the blend. One printed figure, like the caffeine here, fixes a point on that heaviest-first list.
5. Compare the panel with the advertising. They do not always name the same ingredients, and the panel is the regulated one.
6. Look up two ingredients, not all of them. Pick the two the marketing leads on and find the dose their trials used. Two lookups settle most products.
7. Then decide what you are buying. A dose, or a habit. Both are legitimate purchases and they are not the same purchase.

Everything above is applied to this specific bottle on the label panel page, and each of the nine names is taken apart with its own trial record on the ingredients page.

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