One product, one panel, one record.
Culturelle Ultimate Strength Probiotic Capsules — label audit
The best label in its batch on every axis that matters — one named strain, per-strain CFU printed inline, potency guaranteed at expiry, price published — and the brand's own product page still names a strain the product does not contain, calls it "clinically proven", and repeats the same paragraph on four different SKUs.
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, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes.
- 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.
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 | 1 of 1 organism slot carries a printed strain designator. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 1 of 1 organism slot has an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 1 / 1 = 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 | 1 of 1 checked organism slot resolves 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. | 1 / 1 = 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 | 83 mg (20 billion CFUs) |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 1 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"Guaranteed purity & potency / Guaranteed potency through date on box when stored as directed." And, on the live page: "Some competitors claim the number of live probiotics based on when the product was made. We measure the number of live probiotics at product expiration date, guaranteeing you get the full amount per our label whenever you purchase them."
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.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus) | GG | 83 mg (20 billion CFUs) | Human RCT | ("Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG"[tiab] OR "Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG"[tiab] OR "ATCC 53103"[tiab]) AND randomized controlled trial[pt] AND humans[mh] → 186 |
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 — culturelle-ultimate-strength-probiotic-capsules-supplement-facts.png captured The brand's own Supplement Facts image, served from culturelle.com/cdn/shop/files and transcribed by direct reading. DSLD 250886 corroborates it exactly — "Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG … 83 mg … Note: 20 billion CFUs" plus "Inulin … 200 mg".
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 250886 (opens in a new tab) captured Federal record for the 30-count, UPC 0 49100 40051 8, retrieved via the DSLD v9 API on this date; the record's own filing date is not carried in this teardown. Sibling record 250881 covers the 20-count, UPC 0 49100 40035 8. Both UPC cross-checks pass against the live Shopify barcodes — 049100400518 and 04910040035800 respectively — so the panel above is definitively this SKU, corroborated by two independent sources.
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, 1 organism slot carries 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
$0.92 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $27.49 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule box, 1 capsule daily. The 20-capsule box is $24.49, which works out at $1.22 a day against $0.92 — a 33% premium for the smaller pack, invisible from the front of the box.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://culturelle.com/products/ultimate-strength-probiotic-capsules — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Guaranteed purity & potency" / "Meets the FDA guidelines for gluten-free" / lowercase "non-GMO" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
"Guaranteed purity & potency" / "Meets the FDA guidelines for gluten-free" / lowercase "non-GMO"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Three self-assertions, no issuer, no register, no certificate. "Meets the FDA's guidelines for gluten-free" is a self-declaration against a federal threshold, not certification by anyone; lowercase "non-GMO" is not the Non-GMO Project Verified mark. A word-boundary scan for all ten certification tokens returned zero hits — the naive NSF hit resolves to the CSS property "tranSForm" and the naive USP hit to a JavaScript bot-detection regex. Nothing is claimed, so there is no issuer register to check: the status is no certification, not unverified certification. Note also the brand's own contradiction, live this session: the label says "Allergy friendly · Free from … Wheat" while the site footnote says "While this product contains an ingredient sourced from wheat, it meets the FDA's definition of gluten free (less than 20 ppm gluten)."
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 Culturelle Women's 4-in-1 Protection Capsules. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's SKU carries five organisms, every one with a designator — LBV 88, LBV 96, GG, LBV 150N and LBV 116 — built on vaginal-microbiota biology. This SKU carries one organism. Both are real disclosure; only one of them is matched to a target physiology. DSLD 267571 (Women's 4-in-1 Protection, UPC 0 49100 40059 4, live Shopify sku 049100400594) versus DSLD 250886 and the panel PNG culturelle-ultimate-strength-probiotic-capsules-supplement-facts.png, all read 2026-07-31
- Both sell at $27.49 for 30 capsules. The women's product is on sale; Culturelle's men's SKU is discontinued, and the brand's own copy on that page names the unisex Digestive Daily capsule as "the perfect replacement product". culturelle.com live catalogue, skus 049100400518 (this SKU, 30 ct), 049100400594 (Women's 4-in-1) and 049100401690 (Men's Daily Health, discontinued), all read 2026-07-31
What is identical across the pair
- Both contain Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG.
- Both guarantee potency through the date on the box and both are one capsule daily.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 the-page-names-a-strain-the-product-does-not-contain
The live "Key Ingredients" block reads: "Each capsule contains a proprietary blend of clinically proven probiotics including proven effective Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG plus Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis CECT 8145 and high potency B vitamins. The capsules themselves are vegetarian and get their unique purple color from purple carrot concentrate." Every checkable element is contradicted by the product's own Supplement Facts: there is no blend, CECT 8145 is absent, there are no vitamins of any kind on the panel, and the colour comes from titanium dioxide, FD&C Red #40 and FD&C Blue #1. The identical paragraph renders on four Culturelle product pages from the same Shopify section id e79dabd2-8e2d-4e31-9c24-166e7b936d6e — Ultimate Strength, Digestive Daily, Ultimate Balance for Antibiotics and Metabolism + Weight Management — and on this page it is paired with the wrong image, culturelle-antibiotic-capsule.webp. It reads as a content-management defect rather than deliberate deception, and the consequence is real either way: a shopper, a journalist or an AI summariser reading the brand's own page will attribute a strain to a product that does not contain it.
The record: culturelle.com Key Ingredients block against DSLD 250886 and the panel PNG, all read 2026-07-31; the same section id verified present on four product pages — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 the-absent-strains-literature-is-about-body-fat-not-digestion
Because the page asserts CECT 8145 and calls it "clinically proven", its literature is worth being precise about: 14 records across adiposity terms versus 3 across all digestive and immune terms. The four strict RCTs are on abdominal adiposity biomarkers (PMID 30262813), cardiometabolic risk factors (PMID 35643872), visceral fat reduction (PMID 41512635) and SCORAD in atopic dermatitis from a mixture of strains (PMID 29117309). The brand's own site-wide footnote gives it away — "As Measured by body fat mass, body mass index and waist circumference" — a footnote belonging to its weight-management line. So the boilerplate attributes a strain the product does not contain, calls it clinically proven, and attaches it to outcomes the strain has not been trialled for.
The record: PubMed "CECT 8145"[tiab] → 18 (strict); adiposity block → 14; digestive/immune block → 3; four RCTs opened and read, 2026-07-31
Finding 3 most-clinically-researched-strain-rests-on-a-2019-study-count
The claim is footnoted, honestly, as "Based on the number of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG studies, as of January 2019" — explicitly a count, and a seven-year-old one, presented in the present tense. The footnote is honest; the inference a reader draws from volume may not be.
The record: culturelle.com footnote text, read verbatim 2026-07-31
Finding 4 three-synthetic-colourants-in-a-clean-ingredients-product
Other Ingredients: hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, vegetable magnesium stearate, and Colors (Titanium Dioxide, FD&C Red #40, FD&C Blue #1). Three synthetic colourants, entirely cosmetic, in a daily digestive capsule marketed as "made with clean, safe and effective ingredients".
The record: Panel culturelle-ultimate-strength-probiotic-capsules-supplement-facts.png and DSLD 250886, both 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 free-from-wheat-contradicts-the-brands-own-footnote
The label states "Allergy friendly · Free from … Wheat" while the site footnote states "While this product contains an ingredient sourced from wheat, it meets the FDA's definition of gluten free (less than 20 ppm gluten)." Both are the same brand's own assets, live in the same session.
The record: culturelle.com label copy and site footnote, both read 2026-07-31
Finding 6 the-smaller-pack-costs-33-percent-more-per-day
$24.49 for 20 capsules is $1.22 a day; $27.49 for 30 is $0.92. A 33% premium for the smaller pack of an identical capsule, invisible from the front of the box. Against the same brand's Digestive Daily at $17.99 for 30 ($0.60 a day), doubling the CFU from 10 billion to 20 billion raises the daily cost by 53%.
The record: og:price:amount and Shopify variant JSON for both counts, read 2026-07-31
Finding 7 no-certification-of-any-kind
Ten certification tokens scanned with word boundaries, zero hits. What is claimed instead is "vegetarian, free from preservatives, non-GMO", "Meets the FDA guidelines for gluten-free" and "Guaranteed purity & potency" — self-assertions, not certifier marks. The distinction between a lowercase adjective and a certification mark is exactly what a buyer cannot see.
The record: culturelle.com Ultimate Strength page, naive and word-boundary token scans, 2026-07-31
Finding 8 supplement-facts-published-only-as-a-raster-image
The panel exists only as a PNG on the brand's CDN, on a fully modern and fully fetchable Shopify site. Three of three panels in this batch, across two brands.
The record: Panel culturelle-ultimate-strength-probiotic-capsules-supplement-facts.png; page HTML carries no text panel, 2026-07-31
Finding 9 proprietary-blend-language-on-a-product-that-has-no-blend
The shared boilerplate calls this "a proprietary blend of clinically proven probiotics". The panel is one organism with its CFU printed inline. The copy makes an honest panel sound worse than it is, which is its own kind of defect.
The record: culturelle.com Key Ingredients block against DSLD 250886, 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.
- "Guaranteed purity & potency" / "Meets the FDA guidelines for gluten-free" / lowercase "non-GMO" status
- Three self-assertions, no issuer, no register, no certificate. "Meets the FDA's guidelines for gluten-free" is a self-declaration against a federal threshold, not certification by anyone; lowercase "non-GMO" is not the Non-GMO Project Verified mark. A word-boundary scan for all ten certification tokens returned zero hits — the naive NSF hit resolves to the CSS property "tranSForm" and the naive USP hit to a JavaScript bot-detection regex. Nothing is claimed, so there is no issuer register to check: the status is no certification, not unverified certification. Note also the brand's own contradiction, live this session: the label says "Allergy friendly · Free from … Wheat" while the site footnote says "While this product contains an ingredient sourced from wheat, it meets the FDA's definition of gluten free (less than 20 ppm gluten)."
- The ATCC accession behind "GG", as printed
- The strain is unambiguous — GG ≡ ATCC 53103 — but the accession itself appears on neither the panel nor the page. The brand relies on "GG" being famous enough to be self-identifying, and the accession is the auditable object.
- Any third-party certification
- None is claimed, so no issuer register exists to query. "Meets the FDA's guidelines for gluten-free" and lowercase "non-GMO" are self-assertions against a federal threshold and a marketing adjective respectively, not certifier marks.
- Funding source and author conflicts of interest for the cited trials
- Counts and titles were read; full texts were not. No funding characterisation may be published from this record.
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.
This is the best-disclosed product in its batch, and it still carries a page that names a strain it does not contain. Both halves are the finding.
Start with what is right, because there is a lot of it. One organism: Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, 83 mg, 20 billion CFUs printed inline on the panel — not in a footnote, not as a blend total. Potency guaranteed through the date on the box, with the brand attacking the competing practice by name: “Some competitors claim the number of live probiotics based on when the product was made. We measure the number of live probiotics at product expiration date.” A price published on the brand’s own site for both pack sizes. And a “2X” claim footnoted to a named comparator on a like-for-like basis — “Versus 10 Billion CFUs in Culturelle® Digestive Daily Probiotic capsules” — which is how a potency comparison should be written.
Put that beside the pharmacy shelf it sits on. Align’s 24/7 Digestive Support guarantees 10 million CFU to its best-by date. This guarantees 20 billion at expiry. That is a 2,000× difference in guaranteed dose between two products a few feet apart, and neither front-of-box number tells you.
Now the page. A “Key Ingredients” block asserts “a proprietary blend” of LGG “plus Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis CECT 8145 and high potency B vitamins”, coloured “from purple carrot concentrate”. The panel says: no blend, no CECT 8145, no vitamins, and colour from titanium dioxide plus FD&C Red #40 and Blue #1. The same paragraph renders on four Culturelle product pages from one shared Shopify section, and on this one it is paired with the wrong product image. It reads like a content-management defect rather than deception — and the consequence is identical either way. This project’s own brief inherited the error, which is exactly how it came to light.
Worth knowing what the absent strain’s evidence actually is: CECT 8145’s human literature is about body fat, waist circumference and visceral adiposity — 14 records on adiposity against 3 across every digestive and immune term. The brand’s own site-wide footnote, “As Measured by body fat mass, body mass index and waist circumference”, belongs to its weight-management line. So the boilerplate attributes a strain the product does not contain, calls it “clinically proven”, and attaches it to outcomes that strain has not been trialled for.
Two smaller things a buyer would want. The 20-count costs 33% more per day than the 30-count of the identical capsule. And three synthetic colourants sit in a product whose copy says “clean, safe and effective ingredients” — the colour does nothing but colour.