One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life Dr. Formulated Probiotics Prostate+ (Shelf-Stable, 60 veg caps) — label audit
Garden of Life prints a strain designator on the women's sibling SKU and none on this one. Urinary Tract+ (DSLD 326769) names Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM, which returns 204 PubMed records. Prostate+ (DSLD 326768) — same sub-line, same 164 mg blend, same panel architecture, filed one month earlier — names zero designators across all 15 organisms.
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, so the audit's percentages do not silently move.
- 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
25.6 out of 100
Rank 125 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 5 other products — 6 products sit on 25.6 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 15 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 15 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 | 0 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. | 0 / 15 = 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 |
0.2200 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.2558. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 25.6 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 (Total Lacto Cultures 40 billion, Total Bifido Cultures 10 billion) |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 15 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Marketed to men |
"No refrigeration required. At expiration date under recommended storage conditions. Store in a cool, dry place." A string search of the entire DSLD 326768 record returns zero occurrences of "manufacture".
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus casei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus gasseri | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus brevis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus bulgaricus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus salivarius | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum infantis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
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 326768 (opens in a new tab) captured Entry date 2025-02-23, on-market. UPC cross-check passed — the live page's "Item 658010120050" matches DSLD UPC 6 58010 12005 0. Product version code DFP+SS60L-061120.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260517145108 (opens in a new tab) captured Source for price, the price-per-serving div, and every verbatim marketing quotation.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 173757 (opens in a new tab) captured The alternate, cold-chain version, still flagged on-market. Source for the contradictory-CFU-basis finding and for the QCS organic statement that the current record lacks.
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
$1.36 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $40.79 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (30 servings, 2 capsules daily)
- 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 | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| NSF Certified Gluten-Free | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Certified B Corporation | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Green-e Certified Renewable Energy | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| QCS certified organic (claimed on the product page) | Not checked | not checked |
| "Arrive Alive" / "Potency Promise" | Not checked | not checked |
Non-GMO Project Verified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Seal on front of pack. nongmoproject.org's product finder returned 404 to automation; its WordPress search endpoint returns an empty array, which is the wrong endpoint and is not evidence of absence.
NSF Certified Gluten-Free
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
nsf.org returned 403 to automation. Scope trap worth carrying: this certifies the absence of gluten. It says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry or contaminants, and it is not NSF Certified for Sport. This product carries no contents certification at all.
Certified B Corporation
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
bcorporation.net returned 403 to automation. A corporate certification, not a product one.
Green-e Certified Renewable Energy
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Certifies the company's renewable-energy purchasing. Zero product-quality meaning; listed here only because it appears alongside the others on pack and could be misread as one.
QCS certified organic (claimed on the product page)
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
The live page advertises "Made with over 70% organic ingredients—certified by QCS". The current label record (DSLD 326768) contains zero occurrences of "QCS", while the 2018 label (173757) carries an explicit "QCS Certified Organic by QCS" statement. DSLD transcription may be incomplete, so this is recorded as an unresolved discrepancy, not as a dropped certification.
"Arrive Alive" / "Potency Promise"
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Garden of Life trademarks, not third-party certifications. Neither string appears anywhere in the DSLD label record — they are web-only marketing.
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 Dr. Formulated Probiotics Urinary Tract+ Shelf Stable (DSLD 326769). Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's SKU names a strain designator — Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM, 204 PubMed records — and the men's SKU names none, across the same 164 mg blend and the same panel architecture, filed one month apart. DSLD 326768 versus DSLD 326769
- The branded cranberry is swapped: Flowens 500 mg on the men's, Pacran 500 mg on the women's. Both are Naturex trademarks. DSLD 326768 versus DSLD 326769
- The Lacto/Bifido split is re-proportioned — 40 B to 10 B on the men's, 45 B to 5 B on the women's. DSLD 326768 versus DSLD 326769
- The women's panel carries 16 organism rows to the men's 15. DSLD 326768 versus DSLD 326769
What is identical across the pair
- 60 capsules, serving size 2 capsules, 30 servings, in both
- Vitamin D 25 mcg (1,000 IU), 125% DV, from S. cerevisiae culture, in both
- Probiotic blend weight 164 mg in both
- 50 billion CFU at expiry in both
- Organic prebiotic fiber blend, potato resistant starch plus acacia — 440 mg versus 439 mg
- Total actives fill 1,104 mg versus 1,103 mg — one milligram apart
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 unit-price-understated-2x
The brand's own page advertises "$0.68/serving" against a true $1.36 a day. It divides $40.79 by 60 capsules rather than by 30 servings and labels the result "per serving". This is one instance of a proven, arithmetically exact, three-SKU pattern: the understatement factor equals capsules-per-serving every time — 1x on Once Daily Men's (correct), 2x here, 3x on RAW Probiotics Men.
The record: Wayback 20260517145108, price-per-serving div, verbatim: "$0.68/serving" — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 proprietary-blend-164mg-across-15-organisms
164 mg and 50 billion CFU spread across 15 organisms with no per-organism amount. Disclosure is two-tier — Lacto 40 B, Bifido 10 B — which is better than one opaque number, but nothing on the label prevents a distribution in which one cheap organism carries almost all of the count.
The record: DSLD 326768 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 fifteen-probiotic-strains-is-false-precision
The front of pack says "15 PROBIOTIC STRAINS". These are species, not strains — zero ATCC, DSM, CNCM, NCIMB or proprietary codes appear anywhere on the label. And the government's transcription lists Bifidobacterium animalis lactis on two separate rows, which would make it 14 organisms.
The record: DSLD 326768, ingredientId 45779 and 129154 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 strain-named-on-the-womens-sibling-not-here
L. acidophilus NCFM is printed on Urinary Tract+ and returns 204 PubMed records. The men's panel, built on the same architecture and filed one month earlier, names zero designators. The capability, the supplier relationship and the labelling convention all exist at this brand. They are not applied to the men's SKU.
The record: DSLD 326769 versus DSLD 326768 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 gold-standard-trials-is-one-trial
The page says Flowens is "the clinically studied amount in 'Gold Standard' human trials". PubMed holds three Flowens records: one trial, one Letter/Comment, one Nature Reviews Urology commentary. Two of the trial's seven authors are employees of Naturex, which owns the Flowens mark — Emilie Fromentin (NATUREX-DBS, South Hackensack NJ) and Marc Roller (NATUREX SA, Avignon).
The record: PMID 26049866 · queries "Flowens", "Flowens[tiab]", "Flowens[All Fields]" all return 3 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 flowens-effect-below-published-mid-thresholds
The 500 mg arm's placebo-adjusted IPSS difference is 2.6 points (-4.1 versus -1.5). Published minimal important differences for IPSS are 5.2 points overall and 3.2 in men with moderate baseline symptoms, with a prior estimate of 3.1. The effect sits below every one of those thresholds.
The record: PMID 26049866 · PMID 31874883 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 7 published-safety-study-not-corroborated
The page says Flowens "has a published safety study". Four query formulations return zero — "Flowens AND safety" 0, '"cranberry powder" AND safety AND men' 0. The only safety data located sits inside the efficacy trial itself ("There was no effect on clinical chemistry or hematology markers").
The record: PubMed: Flowens AND safety → 0; "cranberry powder" AND safety AND men → 0
Finding 8 vitamin-d-for-prostate-health-unsupported-at-this-dose
The page says "1,000 IU of whole food vitamin D3 for prostate health". No trial was found supporting 1,000 IU/day alone for that outcome. The one on-point positive trial used cholecalciferol ~7,100 IU/day combined with silymarin 480 mg, only in BPH patients with baseline 25-(OH)D below 20 ng/mL. At 125% DV this is a reasonable general-nutrition dose; the prostate framing is the unsupported part.
The record: PMID 39221555 · PMID 30361957 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 no-probiotic-rct-for-the-outcome-on-the-front-of-pack
Six query formulations found no human RCT supporting a prostate or urine-flow outcome for any probiotic organism in this product. The two hits that surface do not support it: PMID 33780106 used a lactobacillus capsule as the placebo comparator in a BPH drug trial, and PMID 37374369 tested D-mannose plus S. boulardii for UTI prophylaxis after cystoscopy in 32 patients.
The record: PubMed: probiotic AND "benign prostatic hyperplasia" AND randomized → 0; probiotic AND "urine flow" AND randomized → 0
Finding 10 the-one-trial-of-two-of-these-species-on-male-hormones-was-null
L. acidophilus and B. longum, both on this panel, were tested together in a randomised, single-blinded, placebo-controlled two-month trial measuring testosterone, DHT, androstanediol glucuronide, androstenedione, DHEAS, SHBG and leptin in 31 men. Verbatim conclusion — "Probiotic consumption did not significantly alter equol excretor status, plasma hormone, or leptin concentrations." NIH-funded, not industry.
The record: PMID 17109580 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 11 contradictory-cfu-basis-on-the-alternate-on-market-version
DSLD 173757 — the 2018 label, still flagged on-market — carries both "At expiration date under recommended storage conditions" as its storage statement and "Guaranteed per serving, at time of manufacture" attached to the L. bulgaricus row. Two incompatible guarantees on one panel. The 2018 version is also the cold-chain formulation; the SKU sold now is the shelf-stable reformulation.
The record: DSLD 173757 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 12 front-of-pack-omits-both-prostate-relevant-ingredients
Neither Flowens nor vitamin D3 — the only two ingredients with any prostate rationale — appears on the front label. The buyer reaching for it in a store sees "50 BILLION" and "15 PROBIOTIC STRAINS", which is precisely the part of the formula with no prostate evidence at all.
The record: Front-of-pack JPEG 658010120050-1_1.jpg, retrieved and read 2026-07-31
Finding 13 neurologist-named-as-formulator-of-a-prostate-product
The page attributes the formula to David Perlmutter, M.D., described as a board-certified neurologist and brain-health expert. No urologist is named anywhere on the page.
The record: Wayback 20260517145108
Finding 14 nomenclature-six-years-stale
Every Lactobacillus row uses pre-2020 naming, superseded when Zheng et al. split the genus into 25. Legal on US labels, but it indicates a panel not revisited in six years — consistent with the label's own "Copyright 2016 Garden of Life LLC" line.
The record: PMID 32293557 — 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
- Seal on front of pack. nongmoproject.org's product finder returned 404 to automation; its WordPress search endpoint returns an empty array, which is the wrong endpoint and is not evidence of absence.
- NSF Certified Gluten-Free status
- nsf.org returned 403 to automation. Scope trap worth carrying: this certifies the absence of gluten. It says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry or contaminants, and it is not NSF Certified for Sport. This product carries no contents certification at all.
- Certified B Corporation status
- bcorporation.net returned 403 to automation. A corporate certification, not a product one.
- Green-e Certified Renewable Energy status
- Certifies the company's renewable-energy purchasing. Zero product-quality meaning; listed here only because it appears alongside the others on pack and could be misread as one.
- QCS certified organic (claimed on the product page) status
- The live page advertises "Made with over 70% organic ingredients—certified by QCS". The current label record (DSLD 326768) contains zero occurrences of "QCS", while the 2018 label (173757) carries an explicit "QCS Certified Organic by QCS" statement. DSLD transcription may be incomplete, so this is recorded as an unresolved discrepancy, not as a dropped certification.
- "Arrive Alive" / "Potency Promise" status
- Garden of Life trademarks, not third-party certifications. Neither string appears anywhere in the DSLD label record — they are web-only marketing.
- The printed Supplement Facts panel
- Three independent routes failed. gardenoflife.com returns 403 to automation; the only product image in the 2026-05-17 archive snapshot is the front-of-pack JPEG with no panel on it; and DSLD's own label-document endpoint returns an API-docs HTML page rather than the label. The sole machine-readable source for this panel is DSLD's human transcription. Two findings rest on that transcription and are marked as transcription-only where they appear: the duplicated Bifidobacterium row, and the contradictory CFU basis on the alternate version.
- Any certification, at any issuer's register
- nsf.org 403, nongmoproject.org product finder 404, bcorporation.net 403. Every certification on this product is therefore brand-asserted and unverified. Unreachable is not the same as absent, and none of these is recorded as "does not hold it".
- Whether QCS organic certification still applies
- Claimed on the live page, absent from the current DSLD transcription, present on the 2018 record. Would need a physical bottle to settle.
- The Flowens full text
- Not retrieved. Effect sizes are quoted from the PubMed abstract; author affiliations from the PubMed 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.
Prostate+ is the best-substantiated product Garden of Life sells to men, and the way it is labelled still gives away the whole game.
The disclosure finding. Garden of Life prints a strain designator on the women’s sibling and not on this one. Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM appears on Urinary Tract+ (DSLD 326769) — same sub-line, same 164 mg blend weight, same panel format, filed one month after this SKU. That designator returns 204 PubMed records. This panel names zero. The capability, the supplier relationship and the labelling convention all exist inside this brand. They are simply not applied to the men’s product.
The pricing defect, now proven. The page advertises “$0.68/serving” for a product whose own label says a serving is two capsules and a bottle is thirty servings. $40.79 ÷ 30 = $1.36 a day. The site is dividing by capsule count. Across three Garden of Life men’s SKUs the understatement factor equals capsules-per-serving exactly — 1× on Once Daily Men’s (where the figure is right), 2× here, 3× on RAW Probiotics Men. It is reproducible with the brand’s own two numbers and a calculator.
Credit where it is due, at full strength. This product contains a named, trademarked, genuinely trial-backed active at the exact dose used in the trial: Flowens organic cranberry, 500 mg, the superior arm of a six-month randomised double-blind dose-ranging study in 124 men over 45 with IPSS ≥ 8 (PMID 26049866). Almost nothing else in this project can say that sentence. It also guarantees CFU at the expiration date, discloses Lacto and Bifido subtotals rather than one opaque number, keeps every claim inside structure/function grammar, and contains no selenium — which, against the SELECT findings, is a safety advantage over competitors that do.
And the four caveats travel with it. “Gold Standard’ human trials” is one trial; two of its seven authors work for the company that owns the Flowens mark. The trial enrolled men with IPSS ≥ 8 — men with clinically significant symptoms — while the product is sold to any man who wants prostate support. And the placebo-adjusted effect is 2.6 IPSS points, below the published minimal-important-difference thresholds of 3.1, 3.2 and 5.2. That is a substantiation-transfer problem, not an illegal-claim problem, and it is worth describing as exactly that.
What this page cannot prove. The printed panel was never obtained — the brand site blocks automation, the archived snapshot carries only a front-of-pack image, and DSLD’s label-document endpoint returns an API docs page. Everything panel-level here comes from the government’s human transcription, and the two findings that rest on it alone — the duplicated Bifidobacterium row and the contradictory CFU basis on the alternate version — are marked as transcription findings wherever they appear.