One product, one panel, one record.
Equate (Walmart) Digestive Health Probiotic Capsules, 50 Count — label audit
The pack attributes its 10 billion live cells to both organisms combined. Walmart's own structured product description attributes all 10 billion to Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG alone. The panel supports the pack, so the page you buy from overstates the dose of the only strain with a research file.
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
51.2 out of 100
Rank 90 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 51.2 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 2 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 1 / 2 = 0.5000 | 0.1200 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 2 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 2 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 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. | 1 / 2 = 0.5000 | 0.1000 |
| 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 |
0.4400 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.5116. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 51.2 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 | 10 Billion Live Cells** (Proprietary Probiotic Blend, 39 mg) |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 2 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
Footnote **, transcribed verbatim from the current pack: "Contains a minimum of 10 billion live cells when manufactured and until the 'BEST If Used By' date, providing proper handling and storage directions are followed." Independently corroborated by NIH's transcription of the prior UPC: "(Contains a minimum of 10 billion live bacteria when manufactured and until the 'Best If Used By' date.)" Two things this gets more right than most of this category. It says "minimum" — a floor, not a target. And it says "live cells", not "CFU", on both the front of pack and the panel, so where other labels stretch a colony-forming unit to cover inanimate organisms, this one simply avoids the unit. Whatever the motive, the wording does not overclaim. Storage: "Store in a cool, dry place. For best results, we recommend you store this product in the original blister card package."
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus) | GG | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG"[All Fields] OR "Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG"[All Fields] → 1714; the same OR "ATCC 53103" AND randomized controlled trial[Publication Type] → 191; ("Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG" OR "LGG") AND (irritable bowel OR "digestive") AND randomized controlled trial[pt] → 17; "Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG" AND immune AND randomized controlled trial[pt] → 29 |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | ("Lactobacillus acidophilus"[All Fields]) AND randomized controlled trial[Publication Type] → 471 |
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 — walmart-asset-d4af9a8e-d0bb-4a03-b6f7-98b1ddf10b35 captured The current pack's Supplement Facts panel, image asset 3 of 11 on the Walmart listing, downloaded and transcribed verbatim: "Serving Size 1 Capsule · Servings Per Container 50; Proprietary Probiotic Blend Providing (10 Billion Live Cells**) — 39 mg‡; Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Lactobacillus acidophilus; ‡Daily Value not established." The ** footnote panel is asset 5, the pack seal carrying "Factory Certified" is asset 2, and the side panel carrying the health claims and the on-pack barcode 6 81131 36050 0 is asset 10. Other ingredients on the current pack: "Cellulose, Inulin/FOS, Capsule (Hypromellose, Pectin, Glycerol, Titanium Dioxide), Magnesium Stearate (Vegetable Source), Silicon Dioxide." Everything on this page comes from these current-pack transcriptions rather than from the government record.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — walmart-117793671-2026-07-31https://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-Digestive-Health-Probiotic-Capsules-50-Count/117793671 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured HTTP 200, 460 KB, with the full __NEXT_DATA__ payload parsed. Walmart item usItemId 117793671, productId 6MEZRTFP8ITJ, UPC 681131360500 confirmed against the on-pack barcode in Walmart's own image asset. Source of the price ($21.98, unitPrice 44.0¢/count, availabilityStatus OUT_OF_STOCK), the IDML specification block recording "Gender : Unisex", the structured shortDescription that conflicts with the pack, and the idml.ingredients field that omits the probiotic entirely. One extraction note worth publishing: the same payload contains sponsored-ad prices in the same shape as the product price — the $15.28 figure that circulates for this SKU belongs to a MiraLAX/MiraGUT ad slot in Walmart's BuyBoxAd module, not to this product, and a scraper that grabs the first currentPrice in the payload gets the advertiser's price.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 178595 (opens in a new tab) captured NIH label record for the same product line under the prior UPC 6 81131 13029 5, distributor of record Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Bentonville AR 72716. It corroborates the potency wording independently — "(Contains a minimum of 10 billion live bacteria when manufactured and until the 'Best If Used By' date.)" — and records the same two nested organisms under one blend figure, plus the Culturelle comparison and its trademark disclaimer. Eight years old and tied to a superseded UPC, so it is used only as corroboration, never as this product's panel.
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
$0.44 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $21.98 USD
- What that buys
- 50 acid-resistant capsules in blister packs, 1 capsule daily, 50 servings ($21.98 ÷ 50 = $0.4396, matching Walmart's own stated unit price of 44.0¢/count). The pack claims a "7 WEEK SUPPLY", which is 49 days at one a day for 50 capsules. The item was OUT_OF_STOCK at fetch, with both listed variants ("10 billion CFU" and "39 mg") marked NOT_AVAILABLE, so this price may not be actionable.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-Digestive-Health-Probiotic-Capsules-50-Count/117793671 — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Factory Certified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
Factory Certified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The pack seal reads "Made in the USA with domestic and imported ingredients — Factory Certified". No issuer is named. "Factory Certified" is not a recognised third-party programme, and there is no register to check because no certifier is identified — it reads as a certification mark and functions as one visually, without being one. No NSF, USP, Informed Choice or Non-GMO Project claim appears anywhere on the pack or the listing. The only other guarantee language is retail rather than quality: "Satisfaction guaranteed – Or we'll replace it or give you your money back." No third-party contents certification is held or 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.
This brand sells no women’s counterpart to this product, so there is no diff to run.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 the-website-attributes-all-ten-billion-to-gg-and-the-pack-does-not
The pack side panel reads, verbatim, "Equate™ Digestive Health Probiotic contains 10 billion live cells** of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, one of the most studied probiotic strains." Walmart's structured shortDescription field reads, verbatim, "These probiotic acid-resistant capsules contain 10 billion active cultures of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, which help to maintain the natural balance of good bacteria in your digestive system." The pack attributes the number to both organisms combined; the page attributes it all to GG. The panel supports the pack, so the listing overstates the dose of the only strain that has a research file — on the page you buy from.
The record: Walmart image asset index 10 (pack side panel, barcode 6 81131 36050 0 visible) against the __NEXT_DATA__ shortDescription field, both read 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-Digestive-Health-Probiotic-Capsules-50-Count/117793671 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 the-hedge-is-stripped-in-the-retail-channel
The pack says "our formula may help promote gastrointestinal health and support your body's immune system.†" and "May help alleviate occasional digestive discomfort†". The Walmart page says "can help promote gastrointestinal health" and "Helps alleviate occasional digestive discomfort". A hedged structure/function claim upgraded to an unhedged one, twice, on the same product.
The record: Walmart image asset index 10 (pack side panel) against the __NEXT_DATA__ shortDescription and feature bullets, both read 2026-07-31
Finding 3 proprietary-blend-two-organisms-one-number
Proprietary Probiotic Blend Providing (10 Billion Live Cells**) — 39 mg‡, across Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG and Lactobacillus acidophilus, with the split disclosed nowhere. Neither organism can be checked against its own trial dose.
The record: Current pack Supplement Facts panel, Walmart image asset index 3 of 11, transcribed 2026-07-31; DSLD 178595 records the same two nested organisms under one blend figure
Finding 4 the-acidophilus-is-species-only
No designator is printed for the second organism, so the 471 randomised trials on the species are not attributable to it. Half this blend is unidentifiable, and it is the half with no name in the marketing either.
The record: ("Lactobacillus acidophilus"[All Fields]) AND randomized controlled trial[Publication Type] → 471, run 2026-07-31, against the current pack panel
Finding 5 compare-vs-culturelle-invites-an-equivalence-the-panel-cannot-support
The pack carries "Compare vs Culturelle® Digestive Health Probiotic*" with the required trademark disclaimer, "This product is not manufactured or distribuited by i-Health, Inc., owner of the registered trademark Culturelle Digestive Health Probiotic" — a typo on the label as transcribed. Culturelle Digestive Health is a 10-billion-CFU single-strain LGG product. Equate invites a like-for-like comparison at half the price, and its own 10 billion is split between GG and an unnamed acidophilus, so on the axis the comparison is actually about — GG delivered — it cannot show equivalence. The comparison is made on total cell count while the strain it name-checks is a smaller and undisclosed share of it.
The record: Current pack panel and DSLD 178595 label statements, both read 2026-07-31
Finding 6 factory-certified-is-certification-shaped-language-with-no-issuer
"Made in the USA with domestic and imported ingredients — Factory Certified" on the pack seal. No certifier is named, "Factory Certified" is not a recognised third-party programme, and there is no register to check because there is nobody to check with.
The record: Walmart image asset index 2 (pack seal), read 2026-07-31
Finding 7 walmart-publishes-no-supplement-facts-in-any-machine-readable-field
The structured idml.ingredients object on the product page contains only the other-ingredients line. The probiotic blend, the cell count and the strain list appear in no machine-readable field anywhere on the page — they exist solely inside image asset 3 of 11. A screen reader, a price-comparison bot or an LLM shopping assistant cannot read what is in this bottle.
The record: Walmart __NEXT_DATA__ payload for usItemId 117793671, idml.ingredients field, against image asset index 3, both 2026-07-31
Finding 9 the-government-label-record-is-eight-years-old-and-tied-to-a-superseded-upc
DSLD 178595 was entered 2018-06-25 under UPC 6 81131 13029 5, while the pack on sale carries 6 81131 36050 0 and is badged "NEW & IMPROVED". The record is used here only as corroboration of the potency footnote; the panel on this page was transcribed from the current pack, not from the record.
The record: DSLD 178595 against the on-pack barcode 6 81131 36050 0 visible in Walmart image asset index 10, both 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.
- Factory Certified status
- The pack seal reads "Made in the USA with domestic and imported ingredients — Factory Certified". No issuer is named. "Factory Certified" is not a recognised third-party programme, and there is no register to check because no certifier is identified — it reads as a certification mark and functions as one visually, without being one. No NSF, USP, Informed Choice or Non-GMO Project claim appears anywhere on the pack or the listing. The only other guarantee language is retail rather than quality: "Satisfaction guaranteed – Or we'll replace it or give you your money back." No third-party contents certification is held or claimed.
- How the 10 billion live cells splits between GG and acidophilus
- The panel gives one figure, 39 mg and 10 billion live cells, for a Proprietary Probiotic Blend of two organisms. The split is disclosed nowhere — not on the pack, not on the Walmart page, not in the NIH label record. This is what makes the pack's Culturelle comparison unsupportable and the GG dose unknowable.
- Which Lactobacillus acidophilus strain this contains
- The panel names the species and nothing else. 471 randomised trials exist on various acidophilus strains and none of them is attributable to an unnamed one.
- The issuer behind "Factory Certified"
- None is named. "Factory Certified" is not a recognised third-party programme, so there is no register to query — the mark is certification-shaped and has no certifier behind it.
- Any current government label record for the UPC on sale
- DSLD holds exactly one Equate Digestive Health Probiotic record, 178595, entered 2018-06-25 under UPC 6 81131 13029 5, while the SKU on sale carries 6 81131 36050 0 and is badged "NEW & IMPROVED". The absence was double-queried: q=Equate probiotic (size 60) returns 178595 as the only Digestive Health record, and q=Equate Digestive Health Probiotic (size 30) filtered to brand Equate returns 178595 plus three distinct Digestive Care Probiotic SKUs. Two checks say the formulation is nonetheless the same generation — the other-ingredients lists match near-verbatim, and the front of pack says "2 STRAINS" matching the two nested organisms in the record — but that inference was not relied on, because the current Supplement Facts panel itself was recovered from Walmart's own image assets and everything on this page is transcribed from the current pack.
- An actionable price
- The item was OUT_OF_STOCK at fetch, with both listed variants marked NOT_AVAILABLE.
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.
The cheap store brand has the most careful CFU wording in its batch, and the page selling it undoes the care.
Start with the label, because it is genuinely good. The footnote reads “Contains a minimum of 10 billion live cells when manufactured and until the ‘BEST If Used By’ date, providing proper handling and storage directions are followed.” Three things there are better than most of this category manages. “Minimum” is a floor, not a target. “Live cells” rather than “CFU” means the unit is never stretched to cover inanimate organisms, as it is on two other labels torn down the same day. And the guarantee runs through the best-if-used-by date, not to the factory door. The pack’s own claim wording is hedged too — “may help”, with the FDA disclaimer present. The flagship strain is named correctly and specifically as L. rhamnosus GG, one of the best-evidenced probiotic strains in existence, at $0.44 a day.
Then read the website. Walmart’s structured description says the capsules “contain 10 billion active cultures of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG”. The pack says the 10 billion is “of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG”. The panel supports the pack. So the listing attributes the entire dose to the one organism with a research file, when the panel says it is shared with a second organism whose share is not disclosed. On the same page, “may help” becomes “can help” — twice.
The blend is what makes that unfixable. Proprietary Probiotic Blend Providing (10 Billion Live Cells*) — 39 mg*, two organisms, no split, published nowhere. GG’s trial literature typically runs at 10⁹ to 10¹⁰ CFU/day. If GG is the minority organism here, the product may deliver well under a studied dose, and the label is built so no buyer can tell. The second organism is species-only — 471 randomised trials exist on L. acidophilus strains and not one of them is attributable to an unnamed one.
Which is exactly what breaks the comparison on the front of the box. The pack says “Compare vs Culturelle® Digestive Health Probiotic”. Culturelle Digestive Health is a single-strain LGG product at 10 billion CFU. Equate invites a like-for-like at half the price — and its 10 billion is split with an unnamed acidophilus, so on the axis the comparison is actually about, GG delivered, it cannot show equivalence. The comparison is made on total cell count; the strain it name-checks is a smaller and undisclosed share of it.
Two structural notes. The one certification-shaped thing on the pack, “Factory Certified”, names no issuer and belongs to no recognised programme — there is no register to check because there is nobody to check with. And Walmart publishes no Supplement Facts in any machine-readable field: its structured ingredients object carries only the other-ingredients line, while the blend, the cell count and the strain names exist solely inside image 3 of 11.