Proprietary blends versus disclosed doses

A proprietary blend lists several ingredients under one combined total, so you learn the names but not the amounts. It is legal, it is extremely common, and it is the most effective way a fully compliant label can tell you far less than it appears to.

How the trick works

Instead of listing each ingredient with its own figure, the panel shows a blend name and a single number. A 600mg blend containing five ingredients could be 560mg of the cheapest one and 10mg each of the rest. The label is accurate either way and there is no way to tell which from the panel.

The one rule that still helps

Ingredients inside a blend must be listed in descending order by weight. So the first-named is present in the largest amount and the last in the smallest. That will not give you numbers, but it gives you the ordering — and when the ingredient the marketing is built around appears last in the blend, that is genuinely informative.

Why companies use them

The stated reason is protecting a formula from being copied, and occasionally that is sincere. Far more often, full disclosure would reveal that the headline ingredient sits well below the amount used in the research that made it famous — present enough to name, not enough to matter.

What a disclosed label lets you do

Three things a blend prevents entirely:

• Compare against research. If Bacopa is listed at 200mg, you can look up what trials used and judge for yourself.
• Compare between products. Two disclosed labels can be put side by side. Two blends cannot.
• Screen against your medication. A pharmacist can assess a named amount. They cannot assess "part of a 600mg blend".

The product this site covers

MemoHive discloses all five amounts: BCAA 2:1:1 at 540mg, Bacopa at 200mg, Rhodiola at 100mg, L-Theanine at 100mg and Panax Ginseng at 90mg. That is the strongest thing about it, and it is why we can criticise the BCAA content specifically rather than gesturing vaguely — the number is right there to argue with. The full breakdown is here.

What disclosure does not guarantee

It does not mean the doses are optimal, and it does not mean the product will work for you. A transparent label with modest amounts is still a modest formula. What it does mean is that you can make an informed decision instead of a hopeful one, which is a different and more valuable thing.

A quick shopping rule

If you cannot see the amount of the ingredient you are buying the product for, you are buying on trust. Sometimes that is fine. It should always be a conscious choice rather than something the label slipped past you — and our guide to reading a Supplement Facts panel covers the rest of what the box is telling you.