One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life Dr. Formulated Pre, Post & Probiotics Gas & Bloating Once Daily 3-in-1 Complete, 50 Billion CFU (30 ct) — label audit
Fifteen of 15 organisms carry a full strain designator on the label — and Amazon's own ingredient text for the same product deletes 14 of them, printing "Bifidobacterium lactis" three times with nothing to tell the three apart. The most transparent label in its batch becomes the least transparent listing at the point of sale.
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 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
69.0 out of 100
Rank 54 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 69.0 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 | 15 of 15 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 15 / 15 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 15 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 15 = 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 | 10 of 15 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. | 10 / 15 = 0.6667 | 0.133333 |
| 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 |
0.593333 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6899. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 69.0 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 | 50 Billion CFU (40 billion Bifido, 10 billion Lacto) across a 160 mg blend |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 15 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"Total Bifido Cultures (40 billion CFU), Total Lacto Cultures (10 billion CFU), Total Probiotic Cultures 50 billion CFU at expiration date under recommended storage conditions."
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | BL818 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | Bb-06 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | Bl-05 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | HN019 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | BB-3 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | Bl-04 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | GG | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | LA-14 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus gasseri | LG-36 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Lactobacillus brevis | LBR-35 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Lactobacillus casei | LC-11 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus salivarius | LS-33 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | LPC-37 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | Lp-115 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | HN001 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
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.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 326764 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market. UPC cross-check passed — Amazon's detail table UPC 658010131773 matches DSLD UPC 6 58010 13177 3, manufacturer part number 104249. Superseded record 297678 (2023, off-market).
- Internet Archive capture — 20260331211013 (opens in a new tab) captured The only price source located for this SKU, and four months old at time of audit.
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, 9 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
$0.98 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $29.39 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule daily), Amazon price. $24.98 on 15% Subscribe & Save.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it from (opens in a new tab)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Non-GMO Project Verified | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| NSF Certified Gluten-Free | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| Certified B Corporation | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
Non-GMO Project Verified
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
nongmoproject.org exposes no queryable verified-product database.
NSF Certified Gluten-Free
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
nsf.org returns HTTP 403.
Certified B Corporation
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 HTTP 403.
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 amazon-strips-the-designators-the-label-carries
The ASIN's ingredient text reads "Bifidobacterium lactis, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Bifidobacterium longum, Bifidobacterium lactis, Bifidobacterium breve, Bifidobacterium lactis, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Lactobacillus acidophilus…" — 14 of 15 designators deleted, leaving one species printed three times with nothing to distinguish the three.
The record: Amazon B09TG3F546 ingredient text versus DSLD 326764 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 the-same-strain-spelled-two-ways-across-sibling-skus
B. breve is "BB-3" here and "Bb-03" on the brand's 100 Billion SKU. One is wrong, and the difference matters — PubMed's "B. breve B-3" is Morinaga's body-fat strain, a different organism from a Danisco-style Bb-03, so a reader chasing the code can land on evidence that belongs to something else.
The record: DSLD 326764 versus DSLD 326762 · PMID 36615686 cited to rule the crediting out — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 six-of-fifteen-strains-have-no-located-human-trial
BL818, Bl-05, BB-3, LG-36, LBR-35 and one further designator return nothing under two spellings each, while the listing fronts "key clinically studied probiotic strains" and "clinically studied HN019". Three more (Bb-06, LC-11, Lp-115) appear only inside multi-strain blends.
The record: PubMed title/abstract screens with second-spelling checks on every zero, 2026-07-31
Finding 4 per-strain-cfu-not-disclosed
Two-tier subtotals are given, which is better than one number and short of useful. Six Bifido strains share 40 billion; nine Lacto strains share 10 billion.
The record: DSLD 326764
Finding 5 three-of-fifteen-strains-are-the-same-subspecies
BL818, HN019 and Bl-04 are all Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, and the postbiotic blend is a fourth BL818-derived component. Legitimate as formulation; worth naming when the headline is a strain count.
The record: DSLD 326764
Finding 6 preforpro-evidence-is-thin-and-blend-bound
One human RCT was located for the bacteriophage prebiotic — the PHAGE-2 study, PMID 32824480 — and it tested the phage preparation as an add-on to a probiotic, not alone. A second apparent hit is a Bacillus subtilis DE111 paper and does not support PreforPro at all.
The record: PMID 32824480 — open it (opens in a new tab)
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.
- Non-GMO Project Verified status
- nongmoproject.org exposes no queryable verified-product database.
- NSF Certified Gluten-Free status
- nsf.org returns HTTP 403.
- Certified B Corporation status
- bcorporation.net returns HTTP 403.
- A current price
- The only price located is a four-month-old Amazon snapshot, and no brand-direct price exists in the Wayback Machine for this SKU at all.
- Per-strain CFU
- 40 billion is spread across 6 Bifido strains and 10 billion across 9 Lacto strains, with no allocation. Nothing prevents GG or HN019 — the two strains doing the marketing work — from being present in trace amounts.
- Any certification, at any issuer register
- NSF 403, B Corp 403, Non-GMO Project not queryable.
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.
On the two axes this project cares about — what you are buying, and what it costs — this is the strongest product in its batch. Fifteen organisms, fifteen strain designators, Lacto and Bifido subtotals disclosed, CFU guaranteed at the expiration date on the panel itself, and the cheapest cost per day of anything audited alongside it at roughly $0.98.
And then Amazon deletes almost all of it. The ASIN’s own ingredient text strips 14 of the 15 designators, leaving Bifidobacterium lactis printed three times in a row with nothing to tell the three apart. The most transparent label in the batch becomes the least transparent listing at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to buy it.
Two things keep the label short of what the marketing claims. Six of the fifteen strains have no located human trial under any spelling, while the listing fronts “key clinically studied probiotic strains”, and three more appear only inside multi-strain blends. And there is no per-strain CFU — six Bifido strains share 40 billion, nine Lacto strains share 10 billion, so GG and HN019, the two strains carrying the marketing, could each be present in trace amounts and the label would look the same.
One naming problem worth flagging for anyone chasing the codes: this label says B. breve BB-3 and the brand’s own 100 Billion sibling says Bb-03. One of the two is wrong. PubMed’s “B. breve B-3” is a third thing again — Morinaga’s body-fat strain — so the wrong spelling leads to evidence that belongs to another organism.