One product, one panel, one record.
Align 3-in-1 Biotic Gummies (Prebiotic + Probiotic + Postbiotic), BlackBerry, 50 Gummies — label audit
Align's entire brand equity rests on Bifidobacterium longum 35624 — "#1 recommended by gastroenterologists", "over 20 years of scientific research". This product does not contain it. It contains a commodity spore-former, inulin and a heat-killed postbiotic. A buyer choosing Align for the strain they read about is not getting that strain.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- Addendum — outside the founding denominators Audited 2026-07-31, outside the frozen founding cohort of 27 and outside every D27 denominator.
- How deep this went
- Label audit — the lighter pass What the label says, what basis it gives for its CFU number, whether the strains are coded, whether a government label record exists — checked and published. No full claim inventory was written for this SKU. It is a real result, and it is a shallower one than the teardowns above it, which is why the page says so before you weigh it against them.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
100.0 out of 100
Rank 1 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 18 other products — 19 products sit on 100.0 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over 86% of the rubric by weight — the share of the five questions below this record could answer. The remaining question is unanswered, and unanswered is not nought: it leaves the divisor rather than dragging the score down. That share travels with the number and is never dropped — this score over 86% of the weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 2 of 2 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 2 / 2 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 2 of 2 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 2 / 2 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "through-expiry": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry yes — 3 of 3. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2200 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 2 of 2 checked organism slots resolve to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 2 / 2 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | Every certification on this record is brand-asserted with the register unreachable, or not yet queried. An unreachable register is a fact about the verification infrastructure, not about this brand, so it may not move its position. | Not answered | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
0.8600 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 1.0000. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 100.0 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | 1 billion (1 x 10^9 CFU) probiotic cells until the best-by date |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 2 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"Provides 1 billion (1 x 10^9 CFU) probiotic cells until the 'best by' date."
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel guarantees the count through the expiration or best-by date. This is the only basis that is falsifiable by a reader holding the bottle.
Some organisms carry a printed strain designator and some are named by species only.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacillus coagulans | LactoSpore | 10 mg | Human RCT | LactoSpore AND "MTCC 5856" |
| Lactobacillus plantarum (heat-killed) | L-137 (Immuno-LP20) | 25 mg | Human RCT | "L-137" AND plantarum |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- Photograph of the printed panel — Align_3in1BioticGummy_SI_6_02-04.jpghttps://www.alignprobiotics.com/en-us/products/probiotics-digestive-support/3-in-1-biotic-gummies — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own label-facts art. The SKU was tied to the Amazon ASIN in the brief by product name, count, flavour and GTIN 030772191316 rather than assumed, because the Amazon page was unreadable.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 2 organism slots carry a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
$1.00 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $24.99 USD
- What that buys
- 50 gummies (25 servings, 2 gummies daily), Target price
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.target.com/p/align-3-in-1-biotic-multi-symptom-relief-gummies-blackberry-50ct/-/A-94982165 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
| Programme | Status at the issuer | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Any third-party certification | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
Any third-party certification
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
None claimed, as with every product in this batch. Align's testing claim is in-house per-lot DNA identity testing, which verifies identity rather than potency and names no external laboratory. Issuer registers were unreachable in any case — Non-GMO Project 404, USP 403, NSF 403 — so nothing is recorded as verified or refuted, only as not claimed.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
Compared against No separate women's SKU — the same GTIN is listed "for Women" at some retailers and ungendered at others. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- Walmart lists this product as "Align Probiotic, 3-in-1 Biotic Gummies, Prebiotic + Probiotic + Postbiotic, Probiotics for Women, 50 Gummies" and H-E-B as "3-in-1 Biotic, Prebiotic + Probiotic + Postbiotic for Women". The brand's own site, Target and Amazon carry no gender wording at all. GTIN 030772191316 listed at four retailers, all read 2026-07-31
What is identical across the pair
- Identical GTIN and identical formula across every listing
- Nothing in the panel is sex-specific: B. coagulans, inulin and heat-killed L-137
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 the-brands-flagship-strain-is-not-in-this-product
Align's reputation is built on B. longum 35624. This gummy contains Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore, inulin and heat-killed L. plantarum L-137 — no 35624 anywhere. Someone buying the Align name for the strain they read about is buying something else.
The record: Panel image Align_3in1BioticGummy_SI_6_02-04.jpg versus the brand's own Bloating Relief panel
Finding 2 strain-identity-printed-as-a-trademark-not-a-deposit-number
LactoSpore resolves to MTCC 5856, but only for a reader who knows to look. The label prints the trademark alone.
The record: PubMed: 7 records pairing "LactoSpore" with "MTCC 5856"
Finding 3 fifty-gummies-is-twenty-five-doses
The serving is 2 gummies. Anyone reading "50 Gummies" as fifty days is off by a factor of two. The trap is present but mild — H-E-B's own shelf label spells out $0.50 per gummy.
The record: Panel image Align_3in1BioticGummy_SI_6_02-04.jpg, serving size 2 gummies, 25 servings
Finding 4 two-grams-of-added-sugar-per-serving
Sugar is the first item in Other Ingredients.
The record: Panel image Align_3in1BioticGummy_SI_6_02-04.jpg
Finding 5 gender-marketed-for-women-at-two-retailers-with-no-compositional-basis
Same GTIN, same formula, and "for Women" appears at Walmart and H-E-B while Target, Amazon and the brand's own site carry no gender wording.
The record: GTIN 030772191316 across four retailer listings, 2026-07-31
Finding 6 strengthen-your-immune-system-is-the-most-assertive-verb-in-its-batch
"Postbiotics to help strengthen your immune system" — still structure/function-worded and carrying the asterisk disclaimer, but it leans harder than anything else audited alongside it. The same unsourced "#1 recommended, nearly 2x more than any other probiotic brand" survey claim appears here too.
The record: alignprobiotics.com product page, verbatim, 2026-07-31
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- Any third-party certification status
- None claimed, as with every product in this batch. Align's testing claim is in-house per-lot DNA identity testing, which verifies identity rather than potency and names no external laboratory. Issuer registers were unreachable in any case — Non-GMO Project 404, USP 403, NSF 403 — so nothing is recorded as verified or refuted, only as not claimed.
- The Amazon listing and price
- amazon.com hard-blocks automated fetching; the ASIN returned a 3,781-byte bot interstitial.
- Any government label record
- None exists. Established by pulling all 13 Align brand records in DSLD individually and reading each UPC — all sit on the 0 37000 prefix, while this product's GTIN 030772191316 is on the 0 30772 prefix. Six differently-worded queries were run first. DSLD is voluntary, so this is a limit on independent verification rather than a defect.
- Whether the 10 mg dose matches the dose used in the cited trial
- Not checked in this pass. The strain is trial-supported for the exact symptom claimed; whether this product delivers the trial's dose is a separate question and is not asserted either way.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Align is a one-strain brand. Twenty years of research, “#1 recommended by gastroenterologists”, an entire reputation — all of it attached to Bifidobacterium longum 35624. This product does not contain 35624. It contains a commodity spore-forming Bacillus coagulans, some inulin, and a heat-killed postbiotic. Anyone reaching for the Align name because of the strain they read about is buying something else.
What is in it, though, is genuinely traceable. LactoSpore resolves publicly to B. coagulans MTCC 5856 — the label prints only the trademark, so you have to know to make the jump — and that strain has a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled human trial on functional gas and bloating, which is the exact symptom this product is sold for. The postbiotic, heat-killed L. plantarum L-137, is printed as a plain designator with 32 records behind it. Two of two actives are matchable to human evidence.
And there is an inversion worth noticing inside Align’s own range. This gummy guarantees 1 × 10⁹ live cells to the best-by date. Align’s flagship capsule guarantees 1 × 10⁷ — a hundred times fewer — and costs more per day. The “serious” dosage form carries the weaker guarantee. The reason is almost certainly formulation rather than virtue: B. coagulans is a spore-former and survives shelf storage far better than a vegetative Bifidobacterium, which is the honest way to explain it to a reader.
One more piece of good practice: the postbiotic is correctly given no CFU figure, because it is not alive. Labelling it as a postbiotic instead of folding it into a CFU total is exactly right — and it is what Renew Life’s 50 Billion panel, audited alongside this, does not do.
The gendering here is instructive. The same GTIN is sold as “Probiotics for Women” at Walmart and H-E-B, and with no gender wording at all at Target, on Amazon, and on Align’s own site. Same formula. The word is applied at the listing layer.