There are over 95,000 supplement products on the U.S. market. Most of them aren't worth your money. Some of them aren't even safe. And the labeling is designed to make everything look premium whether it is or not.
But evaluating a supplement isn't rocket science once you know what to look for. Here's a practical 5-step process you can apply to any product in about two minutes.
This is the single fastest quality signal available. Look for certification marks from one of these organizations:
Less than 1% of supplements carry one of these certifications. That alone tells you how rare genuine quality verification is in this industry. If a product has one, it's already passed a hurdle that most competitors skip entirely.
Important: verify the certification is real. Go to the certifier's website and search for the specific product. Fake certification marks have been found on supplements. If the product doesn't appear in the certifier's database, the mark on the bottle is meaningless.
No certification doesn't automatically mean bad quality. Some excellent brands don't pursue certification because of cost ($5,000-$50,000+ per product per year). But the absence of certification means you need to rely more heavily on the remaining steps.
Most people glance at the front of the bottle and call it done. That's where the marketing lives. The information that actually matters is on the back, in the Supplement Facts panel.
Generic ingredient names on a label are a yellow flag. Quality brands specify exactly what form of each ingredient they use because the form directly affects absorption and effectiveness.
Examples that illustrate the difference:
If a label just says "Magnesium - 400mg" without specifying the form, the company either doesn't think you'll notice or doesn't think the form matters. Both are bad signs.
An ingredient in a supplement is only useful if it's present at an effective dose. Clinical trials establish dose ranges that actually produce results. Anything below that range is window dressing.
Some common benchmarks from published research:
| Ingredient | Typical Studied Dose | Common Underdosed Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Ashwagandha (KSM-66) | 300-600mg/day | 50-100mg |
| Bacopa monnieri (55% bacosides) | 300mg/day | 50-100mg |
| Omega-3 (EPA+DHA combined) | 1,000-2,000mg/day | 300-500mg |
| Vitamin D3 | 1,000-4,000 IU/day | 200-400 IU |
| Curcumin (with absorption enhancer) | 500-1,000mg/day | 100-200mg |
| CoQ10 (ubiquinol) | 100-300mg/day | 30-50mg |
Look up each key ingredient and compare the dose on the label to what clinical trials used. If you're getting a fraction of the studied dose, the supplement is unlikely to do what you're hoping it will.
A bottle advertising "1,000mg of turmeric" might require 3 capsules per serving. If you take one capsule thinking that's a full dose, you're getting 333mg. Always divide the listed amounts by the number of capsules or scoops per serving to know what one unit delivers.
Not all supplement companies are equal, and brand history tells you a lot.
The FDA publishes all warning letters on its website. Search for the brand name. If a company has received multiple warning letters for adulteration, misbranding, or GMP violations, that's a serious red flag. One warning letter might indicate a correctable problem. Multiple letters suggest systemic issues.
The FDA also maintains a database of recalled products. A recall could mean contamination, mislabeling, or the presence of undeclared allergens. Recalls happen even to good companies occasionally, but frequent recalls indicate quality control problems.
Quality brands tend to be transparent about their operations. Signs of a trustworthy brand:
A company that won't tell you where their ingredients come from or who tests their products is probably a company that doesn't want you to know.
Some ingredient suppliers invest heavily in clinical research and quality control for their specific ingredients. When you see trademarked ingredient names on a label, it generally means the manufacturer is sourcing from a vetted supplier rather than buying the cheapest commodity ingredient available.
Examples: KSM-66 (ashwagandha), Shagandha (ashwagandha), Suntheanine (L-theanine), Cognizin (citicoline), Albion chelated minerals, Quatrefolic (methylfolate). These aren't automatically superior, but they typically come with the supplier's own clinical data and quality guarantees.
Some problems are obvious once you know what to look for. Any of these should make you think twice:
A proprietary blend lists multiple ingredients under one total weight without disclosing individual amounts. This makes it impossible to know if any single ingredient is at an effective dose. Companies claim it's to protect their "formula" — but really, it protects them from showing you that the expensive ingredients are barely present.
There's almost never a legitimate reason to hide individual doses. If a company is proud of their formula, they'd want you to see how much of each ingredient you're getting. Transparency and proprietary blends are fundamentally at odds.
Water-soluble vitamins (B-complex, vitamin C) at high doses are generally low-risk because excess is excreted. Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) accumulate in body tissue. Vitamin A above 3,000 mcg RAE per day can cause toxicity over time. Vitamin D above 4,000 IU per day (the tolerable upper limit per the NIH) warrants monitoring. Seeing 10,000% DV of a fat-soluble vitamin should concern you more than impress you.
"Cures arthritis." "Reverses aging." "Eliminates belly fat in 7 days." Supplements legally cannot claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease. If a product is making those claims, the company is either breaking the law or skirting it aggressively. Neither inspires confidence in their approach to quality.
Structure/function claims like "supports immune health" are legal. Disease claims like "prevents the flu" are not. The line between them gets blurry, and the more aggressively a company pushes toward the disease-claim side, the more skeptical you should be.
Quality ingredients cost money. A 90-day supply of properly dosed ashwagandha (KSM-66, 600mg/day) has a real ingredient cost that doesn't support a $6.99 retail price. If a product seems dramatically cheaper than competitors with similar claimed doses, ask yourself what's being cut. It could be ingredient quality, testing, manufacturing standards, or all three.
This doesn't mean expensive always means good. Some brands charge premium prices primarily for marketing and packaging. But rock-bottom prices for complex formulations are almost always a warning sign.
Products listing 30+ ingredients in a single formulation should raise questions. With so many ingredients crammed into a standard capsule or tablet, the math simply doesn't work. A two-capsule serving can hold roughly 1,000-1,200mg of material. Divide that by 30 ingredients and you're averaging 33-40mg per ingredient. Very few nutrients or herbs are effective at those trace levels.
A focused formula with 3-8 well-dosed ingredients will almost always outperform a kitchen-sink product with dozens of underdosed ones.
All four previous steps take knowledge and time. You need to know effective dose ranges, recognize ingredient forms, search FDA databases, and understand certification systems. That's a lot to ask when you're standing in a store aisle or scrolling through Amazon.
Supplement scanner apps compress this entire process into seconds. The best ones analyze ingredients against clinical evidence databases, check for dosing adequacy, flag safety concerns, identify red flags like proprietary blends, and provide an overall quality assessment.
Suppi scans barcodes or searches by product name and evaluates supplements across multiple dimensions — ingredient quality, dosing, transparency, and safety — drawing on a database of over 500 clinical studies and 200,000+ product records. It's essentially a shortcut through steps 1-4.
Other apps in the space include SuppCo and Prove It, each with different approaches. (We cover these in detail in our supplement app comparison.)
The goal isn't to replace your judgment but to give you the data you'd need hours to compile on your own.
Here's the 2-minute evaluation, step by step:
No supplement is perfect, and not every good product will check every box. But this process filters out the worst offenders quickly and helps you make informed choices with the products that remain. The supplement industry's self-regulation model puts the burden on consumers — these five steps are how you carry that burden without wasting your money or risking your health.
Suppi scans 200,000+ supplements for safety, efficacy, and transparency scores backed by 500+ clinical studies.
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