One product, one panel, one record.
Ancient Nutrition SBO Probiotics Ultimate — label audit
The page sells a "trifecta approach" of prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotics on a Supplement Facts panel that contains no prebiotic. The whole panel is a probiotic blend, a fermented botanical blend, hypromellose and carnauba wax — no inulin, no FOS, no GOS, no resistant starch, no acacia — and the government record agrees.
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
- 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 Torn down 2026-07-31, outside the frozen founding cohort of 27 and outside every D27 denominator.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced Three limits sit on this record. (1) The tie between the SKU on sale and DSLD 305810 is a six-attribute content match, not a UPC match, because the storefront exposes no barcode field — so every statement here sourced to the government record describes a label that matches this product on name, count, serving, servings per container, CFU, basis and panel structure, and not a package proven identical. The panel figures themselves were read from the brand's own high-resolution artwork for this SKU and do not depend on that match. (2) Neither certification could be checked at its issuer: bcorporation.net is behind a Cloudflare challenge. Both are recorded as brand-asserted and unverified, which is a fact about the registers and is not a finding that the marks are absent. (3) Whether the product is currently purchasable is unresolved — the page renders a sold-out badge over its own availableForSale true. The findings this page leads with, the species-only panel and the prebiotic claim on a panel with no prebiotic, stand on the panel image and the government record together.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
17.1 out of 100
Rank 135 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 6 other products — 7 products sit on 17.1 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 | 0 of 4 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 4 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 4 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 4 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "at-manufacture": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry no — 2 of 3. | 2 / 3 = 0.6667 | 0.146667 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 0 of 4 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. | 0 / 4 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 |
0.146667 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.1705. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 17.1 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 | SBO Ultimate Probiotic Blend — 808 mg (50 Billion CFU¹) |
| What that count is measured against | At manufacture only |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 4 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"¹At time of manufacture." The basis is stated in three independent places and agrees in all three — the panel footnote, DSLD 305810's Formula re: Contains field ("50 Billion CFU / At time of manufacture"), and the marketing tab ("50 billion CFUs per serving* … *at time of manufacture").
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The count is stated at time of manufacture only. The panel makes no commitment about what is alive when you swallow it.
The panel names species only, with no strain designator anywhere. A species name is not a claim: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species can contain thousands.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saccharomyces boulardii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Saccharomyces boulardii CNCM I-745" AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
| Bacillus coagulans | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Bacillus coagulans" AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
| Bacillus subtilis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Bacillus subtilis" AND probiotic AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
| Bacillus clausii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Bacillus clausii" AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
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 — CL-SBO4756-031623-DTCHi_2900x2900.jpghttps://ancientnutrition.com/products/sbo-probiotics-ultimate — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own high-resolution Supplement Facts artwork on its CDN, label code SBO4756, artwork dated 031623 (16 March 2023). Transcribed by image read. The panel exists only inside this photograph — it is not in machine-readable HTML anywhere on the page.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 305810 (opens in a new tab) captured UPC 8 16401 02475 6, entered 2024-04-23, on market. Matched to the SKU on six converging attributes rather than by UPC — see the verification flag. Corroborates the two-row panel, the 0 / NP nested quantities, the at-manufacture basis and the Carbon Neutral seal as printed copy.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 309190 (opens in a new tab) captured Ancient Nutrition SBO Probiotics Men's Once Daily — the comparison panel used for the men's diff. Not re-analysed here; a separate teardown covers that SKU.
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, 0 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
$1.67 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $49.95 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (30 servings, 2 capsules per serving), 1-pack listed price
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://ancientnutrition.com/products/sbo-probiotics-ultimate — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Carbon Neutral Certified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| B Corp | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| BIO Bottle (Biodegradable Packaging) | Not checked | not checked |
Carbon Neutral Certified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Corroborated as printed label copy by DSLD 305810's Seals/Symbols field, verbatim "Carbon Neutral Certified product / CarbonNeutral.com". That verifies the printing, not the certification. The issuer's register was not reached this session.
B Corp
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
bcorporation.net returns a Cloudflare interstitial and its /api/v0/search endpoint sits behind the same challenge. Brand-asserted; not confirmed and not refuted.
BIO Bottle (Biodegradable Packaging)
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
A packaging claim, not a product-quality certification.
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.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 proprietary-blend-with-no-per-organism-disclosure
808 mg and 50 billion CFU shared across four organisms with no split of either figure. Confirmed in the government record, where all four nested rows carry quantity 0 / NP.
The record: DSLD 305810 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 clinically-studied-attached-to-species-only-organisms
The substantiation sentence reads "Every serving contains 50 billion CFUs* … of proprietary, clinically studied Saccharomyces boulardii, Bacillus clausii, Bacillus coagulans and Bacillus subtilis." Whatever trials that alludes to were run on named strains this label does not name.
The record: Panel image CL-SBO4756-031623-DTCHi_2900x2900.jpg and the brand's own ingredient copy, read 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://ancientnutrition.com/products/sbo-probiotics-ultimate — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 3 prebiotic-claim-with-no-prebiotic-on-the-panel
The page sells a "trifecta approach to gut health by pairing clinically studied probiotics with prebiotics and postbiotics", and the government record carries the same sentence. The full Supplement Facts is: SBO Ultimate Probiotic Blend 808 mg, Organic Fermented Botanical Blend 350 mg, hypromellose, organic carnauba wax. There is no inulin, no FOS, no GOS, no resistant starch and no acacia anywhere on it.
The record: DSLD 305810 versus the panel image, both read 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 postbiotics-defined-as-something-the-body-makes
The brand defines postbiotics as "the metabolites (enzymes and organic acids) that are created by probiotics" — which describes something produced in the gut after the capsule is swallowed, not an ingredient in the bottle. No postbiotic is itemised on the panel either.
The record: Brand ingredient copy on the product page, read 2026-07-31
Finding 5 cfu-stated-at-manufacture-only
The least informative basis there is — the count on the day the powder was blended, not the count in the capsule fourteen months later. It is disclosed plainly and consistently, which is more than much of this category manages, and it is still the weak form.
The record: Panel footnote "¹At time of manufacture." and DSLD 305810 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 species-called-strains-in-the-brands-own-substantiation
The ingredient copy reads "these four strains are soil-based organisms or SBO probiotics." They are four species. The category's most common error, committed inside the sentence that is supposed to carry the evidence.
The record: Brand ingredient copy on the product page, read 2026-07-31
Finding 7 no-product-quality-certification-of-any-kind
The three certifications claimed — Carbon Neutral Certified, B Corp, BIO Bottle — are about carbon accounting, corporate governance and packaging. Not one says anything about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry, heavy metals or microbial contamination. There is no NSF contents certification, no USP verification, no Informed Choice mark and no disclosed third-party potency assay.
The record: Dietary Restrictions tab, verbatim "3rd Party Certified: Carbon Neutral Certified, B Corp, BIO Bottle (Biodegradable Packaging)", read 2026-07-31
Finding 8 identical-organisms-to-the-brands-own-mens-sku
SBO Probiotics Men's Once Daily lists the same four organisms in the same order with the same absence of designators. The men's positioning is carried entirely by a 310 mg herb blend with undisclosed component doses.
The record: DSLD 305810 versus DSLD 309190 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 sold-out-badge-contradicts-the-pages-own-availability-data
The gallery renders a sold-out badge while the page's own product data reports availableForSale true for the product and every variant.
The record: Rendered product page and its embedded product data, both read 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.
- Carbon Neutral Certified status
- Corroborated as printed label copy by DSLD 305810's Seals/Symbols field, verbatim "Carbon Neutral Certified product / CarbonNeutral.com". That verifies the printing, not the certification. The issuer's register was not reached this session.
- B Corp status
- bcorporation.net returns a Cloudflare interstitial and its /api/v0/search endpoint sits behind the same challenge. Brand-asserted; not confirmed and not refuted.
- BIO Bottle (Biodegradable Packaging) status
- A packaging claim, not a product-quality certification.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- A UPC-grade tie between the SKU on sale and DSLD 305810
- The headless storefront exposes the SKU (SBOCAULTI090) but no barcode field, so the government record could not be matched by UPC. The match rests instead on six converging attributes — product name, 60 capsules net contents, 2-capsule serving, 30 servings per container, 50 Billion CFU at time of manufacture, and an identical two-row panel of 808 mg plus 350 mg. That is a strong match and it is not identity proof.
- B Corp and Carbon Neutral status at the issuers' own registers
- bcorporation.net is behind a Cloudflare challenge. Both are recorded as brand-asserted and unverified, which is a statement about the registers and must never be read as a finding that the certifications are absent.
- Which strains the words "clinically studied" refer to
- Unanswerable from the label. No designator is disclosed for any of the four organisms, so no strain can be queried and no trial can be matched. This is a disclosure failure, not a search failure.
- Whether the product is actually purchasable
- The rendered page shows a sold-out badge while the page's own data reports availableForSale true for the product and all three variants. Checkout was not tested.
- What explains the CFU-density gap against the brand's own men's SKU
- Ultimate delivers 50 billion CFU in 808 mg — 16.2 mg per billion. Men's Once Daily delivers 25 billion in 245 mg — 9.8 mg per billion. The Ultimate blend is about 65 percent less CFU-dense per milligram for the same four species. Different strains, different ratios or more carrier would all produce that, and because both are proprietary blends it cannot be resolved from the label. Recorded as an observation, not an accusation.
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.
Four organisms, and not one of them is identified.
SBO Ultimate Probiotic Blend — 808 mg (50 Billion CFU¹) Saccharomyces boulardii, Bacillus coagulans, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus clausii.
No ATCC, DSM, CNCM, NCIMB, CECT or MTCC accession appears on the label, on the page, or in the government transcription. And the sentence that is supposed to carry the evidence reads: “proprietary, clinically studied Saccharomyces boulardii, Bacillus clausii, Bacillus coagulans and Bacillus subtilis.” Whatever trials that points at were run on named strains this label does not name.
The S. boulardii row is where that matters most. There is a heavily trialled S. boulardii strain — CNCM I-745, ten randomised controlled trials under its strict designator. Anyone who has read about S. boulardii has read about that strain. Nothing here says this is it. Nothing here says it isn’t.
Then the prebiotic. The page sells a “trifecta approach to gut health by pairing clinically studied probiotics with prebiotics and postbiotics”, and the government record carries the same sentence. Here is the complete Supplement Facts: probiotic blend, fermented botanical blend, hypromellose, carnauba wax. No inulin. No FOS. No GOS. No resistant starch. No acacia. The disclosure is trivially possible — another product read the same day itemises inulin and fructooligosaccharides on its panel — and this one does not do it.
Credit where it is owed: the CFU basis is stated, plainly, in three independent places, and at time of manufacture is at least a basis. Claim wording is disciplined and correctly disclaimed. Nothing here crosses into disease-claim territory.
And the men’s comparison the catalogue itself invites: the brand’s SBO Probiotics Men’s Once Daily carries the same four organisms, character for character, at half the CFU for $1.00 a day against this SKU’s $1.67. The entire “men’s” differentiation is a herb blend whose component doses are undisclosed. This product is not a men’s probiotic; it is the same four unnamed species at double the count.