Proprietary Blends: What Consumers Need To Know

A proprietary blend is a group of ingredients that are combined together and displayed on the label without specifying exactly how much of each ingredient is being included.

Here is an example (Huel Daily Greens):

On this label, we see six proprietary blends, each containing between two and twenty different ingredients.

Note that there is no way of determining how much of each ingredient is any of the blends. In fact, the only clue is the order of ingredients; the ingredient most predominant in the blend is listed first and the least predominant is listed last.

For example, in the Organic Antioxidant Greens Blend (which makes up 2.6 grams in one serving), the ingredient with the highest proportion of the blend is chlorella and the ingredient with the lowest proportion is calciferous marine algae.

That is unfortunately all we know. We don’t know for sure if there are 1 mg or 100 mg of calciferous marine algae. There could be 2,000 mg of chlorella or there could be 500 mg.

The use of proprietary blends is very common in the supplement industry for two reasons. One of those reasons is noble and one is a bit sketchy.

The noble reason is this: if a manufacturer publishes the exact formula for making a product, once the product becomes popular, it is going to get copied. It is very understandable for a manufacturer to want to prevent this from happening.

Here is the other reason you see proprietary blends though. Manufacturers often want to add popular ingredients to formulas so that they sell better. Sometimes, these ingredients are expensive, so manufacturers add a tiny amount of an ingredient to a proprietary blend. This allows them to get an advertising benefit without disclosing the fact that there is not enough of that ingredient to make a difference.

I call this fairy dust marketing.

The truth is that in a typical proprietary blend, the ingredients listed toward the end of the blend are often just fairy dust. They are there to make the product look stronger, but are not in sufficient quantity to be therapeutic. Remember: a great ingredient is not effective if you don’t take enough of it.

That is why as a consumer, you are absolutely within your right to be skeptical of proprietary blends. Yes, there is a valid reason for manufacturers to use them, but the benefit is for the manufacturer rather than the consumer.

Here are my tips about proprietary blends:

• Do not write off manufacturers that use them. Great companies with great brands use proprietary blends to protect their formulas.
• Do be skeptical, especially of the ingredients listed toward the end of a proprietary blend. It is completely valid to sort of assume that there is not enough of those ingredients to really be useful.
• Do not replace other supplements you use simply because you see the same ingredient in a proprietary blend.
• Look at the total volume of the blend. That may give you a clue of the ratios in the blend. If there are only 150 mg of a particular blend in a formula and there are six ingredients in the blend, you can pretty much be assured that that blend is just fairy dust. I am very skeptical of some of the blends listed on the example label above.

Hope that helps!