One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life Primal Defense Ultra, 15 Billion CFU Plus HSOs, 90 Capsules — label audit
"15 Billion CFU Daily" is a three-capsule figure. The Supplement Facts serving is one capsule at five billion, at time of manufacture, with no expiry guarantee anywhere on the label. "90 Capsules" is thirty days at the advertised potency, not ninety.
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.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced The panel on this page is a federal transcription, not an image-verified reading. gardenoflife.com returns HTTP 403 to automation behind Akamai and DSLD's own label PDFs and thumbnails return 403 to direct requests, so no label image for this SKU could be opened. An earlier pass in this project found two DSLD transcription errors on a product where brand images were available for comparison, so every panel detail here should be read as NIH-transcribed rather than eyeballed. The UPC cross-check between the marketplace listing and the federal record does pass cleanly, so the record is definitively this SKU. Separately, the marketplace buy-box price could not be retrieved — the page renders it asynchronously and two fetchers failed — so the price published here is the brand's own direct price from a 2026-04-20 archive snapshot, and no marketplace price is quoted at all.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
17.1 out of 100
Rank 135 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 6 other products — 7 products sit on 17.1 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over 86% of the rubric by weight — the share of the five questions below this record could answer. The remaining question is unanswered, and unanswered is not nought: it leaves the divisor rather than dragging the score down. That share travels with the number and is never dropped — this score over 86% of the weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 0 of 13 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 13 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 13 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 13 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "at-manufacture": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry no — 2 of 3. | 2 / 3 = 0.6667 | 0.146667 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 0 of 13 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 / 13 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | Every certification on this record is brand-asserted with the register unreachable, or not yet queried. An unreachable register is a fact about the verification infrastructure, not about this brand, so it may not move its position. | Not answered | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
0.146667 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.1705. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 17.1 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | 15 Billion CFU Daily (in a 3 capsule serving); HSO Probiotic Blend 410 mg — 5 Billion CFU count at time of manufacture |
| What that count is measured against | At manufacture only |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 13 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"BioProtect Packaging System / 15 Billion CFU Daily / CFU count at time of manufacture" — and on the blend row itself, "5 Billion CFU count at time of manufacture."
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The count is stated at time of manufacture only. The panel makes no commitment about what is alive when you swallow it.
The panel names species only, with no strain designator anywhere. A species name is not a claim: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species can contain thousands.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saccharomyces boulardii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Saccharomyces boulardii" AND randomized AND humans[mh] |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bacillus subtilis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Bacillus subtilis" AND probiotic AND randomized AND humans[mh] |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus casei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus salivarius | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus brevis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | — 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 322603 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market federal record, filed as "Ultra Ultimate Probiotic Formula" under the brand "Garden of Life Primal Defense", 90 UltraZorbe™ vegetarian capsules. UPC cross-check passes — the marketplace product details table gives UPC 658010112352 and this record's UPC is 6 58010 11235 2. Source for the entire panel, the potency statements, the iron row, the allergen line and the seal list. NIH-transcribed, not image-verified: the brand blocks automated access and DSLD's own label images 403.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260420222706 (opens in a new tab) captured The archived brand store page, used only for price. The Magento optionPrices config on that snapshot maps the size swatches to $39.19 for 60 ct, $50.39 for 90 ct and $87.19 for 180 ct, against an MSRP of $58.99 for this size.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — amazon-B000GWG8FS-2026-07-31https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GWG8FS — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured HTTP 200, but with the price block rendered asynchronously, so no price was retrievable. Used for the UPC that ties this teardown to the federal record, for the listing title and bullets, and for the Date First Available of 16 September 2003.
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
$1.68 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $50.39 USD
- What that buys
- 90-capsule bottle. 90 servings at the panel's 1-capsule serving; 30 days at the label's own 3-capsule maintenance dose. MSRP on the same page is $58.99; the 60 ct is $39.19 and the 180 ct is $87.19.
- 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Green-e — Certified Renewable Energy | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
| "Gluten free" (unqualified) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
Green-e — Certified Renewable Energy
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
The complete seal list on this label, per the federal record. Green-e is a corporate renewable-energy purchasing claim; it certifies nothing about the capsule. Its participant register was not queried in this pass. The label's other environmental lines are in the same category — "Printed with vegetable based inks on 100% recyclable material" and "We buy 100% Certified Renewable Energy".
"Gluten free" (unqualified)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The label makes an unqualified gluten-free claim with no certifier at all, and the marketplace title repeats it. The same brand certifies that exact claim through NSF on a different product in its own range, so this is a choice rather than a capability gap.
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 fifteen-billion-daily-is-a-three-capsule-figure
The front of the bottle says "15 Billion CFU Daily" beside "90 Capsules". The Supplement Facts serving is one capsule at 5 billion, and the label's own directions say "Adults begin with 1 capsule per day with 8oz. of water and gradually increase to 1 capsule 3 times per day." Both numbers are on the label, so this is not concealment — but a shopper reading "15 Billion CFU, 90 Capsules" reasonably reads ninety days. It is thirty.
The record: DSLD 322603 label statements and directions, verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 at-manufacture-with-no-expiry-floor-at-all
Every potency figure on this label is qualified as at time of manufacture and no expiry number appears anywhere. For scale, this brand's own Dr. Formulated line guarantees CFU at expiration, and a competitor torn down alongside this product discloses a 70% decline between the two endpoints. Applying nothing more than "some decay occurs", the 15 billion on this bottle is a ceiling with no floor.
The record: DSLD 322603 statements array, read 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 zero-designators-on-the-organism-the-whole-concept-is-built-on
"Homeostatic® Soil Organisms (B. subtilis)" is the differentiator, and the B. subtilis carries no designator. Neither does the S. boulardii, whose species-level evidence base is overwhelmingly CNCM I-745 — a code absent from this label. Thirteen species, zero identities, and a strain-swap substantiation gap waiting to happen the first time someone cites a species trial for this bottle.
The record: DSLD 322603 panel; PubMed species-level counts run 2026-07-31; anchor PMID 29868585 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 zero-findable-literature-on-the-product-or-the-hso-concept
Four spellings of the product name and four of the Homeostatic Soil Organism concept, plus "Poten-Zyme", all return zero relevant records, with quotedphrasesnotfound diagnostics captured for each. The naive queries are the hazard: "Primal Defense" returns 66 hits and "Homeostatic Soil Organism" returns 27, and in both cases PubMed dropped the quoted phrase and searched the component words. A count without those diagnostic fields is not evidence.
The record: PubMed E-utilities, nine queries with querytranslation and quotedphrasesnotfound captured, 2026-07-31
Finding 5 contains-iron-in-a-product-with-nothing-male-about-it
2 mg of iron per capsule, 10% DV, as ionic plant-based minerals — 6 mg a day at the 3-capsule maintenance dose. The label carries the mandatory warning that accidental overdose of iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under six. Adult men have no routine indication for supplemental iron, and men are the population in which iron overload matters most. The dose is modest and this is a formulation mismatch for the men's use case rather than a safety alarm — but it is the most concrete "this was not designed for you" fact on the label of a product that men's listicles route men toward.
The record: DSLD 322603 Iron row and iron warning, verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 the-retail-listing-is-less-accurate-than-the-regulatory-label
The label says "13 species with HSOs". The marketplace title says "13 Strains Plus HSOs" and the bullets say "13 hardy beneficial strains". The label says "supports normal bowel function"; the listing says "relieve constipation" and "probiotics for constipation", dropping the qualifier that keeps a bowel-regularity claim on the structure/function side. Garden of Life's own regulatory copy is more accurate than its retail listing, which is an inversion of this category's normal pattern and worth crediting the label for.
The record: DSLD 322603 versus the Amazon B000GWG8FS title and About-this-item bullets, both 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GWG8FS — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 7 no-product-quality-certification-whatsoever
The federal record's seal list has one entry, Green-e, which is a corporate renewable-energy purchasing claim. No NSF Certified Gluten-Free, no Non-GMO Project Verified, no B Corporation — all of which the brand's own sibling Ultimate Care SKUs carry — and no USP, no Informed Choice and no named cGMP registrar. Meanwhile the label makes an unqualified "gluten free" claim with no certifier, on a claim the same brand certifies through NSF elsewhere.
The record: DSLD 322603 Seals/Symbols field versus DSLD 297590 and 297600 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 8 cultured-in-dairy-on-a-clean-whole-food-product
The allergen line reads "Probiotics are cultured in dairy, which is generally consumed during the fermentation process." Easy to miss on a product sold as a clean whole-food supplement. It is disclosed, correctly, and it is worth quoting.
The record: DSLD 322603 allergen statement, verbatim
Finding 9 unmaintained-retail-bullets-including-one-from-a-different-sku
The listing bullets contain "Lactobaccilus" and "health internal environment", both sic, and — more materially — describe a "daily probiotic powder formula" on a listing for 90 capsules. A bullet from a different product was pasted onto this one. The listing also carries no FDA disclaimer, while the label does. Unsubstantiated by anything on the label or in the literature searched: "maximize the benefits of a healthy diet" and "boost nutrient absorption".
The record: Amazon B000GWG8FS About-this-item bullets, read verbatim 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GWG8FS — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 10 eleven-year-old-panel-on-a-twenty-three-year-old-listing
The label carries a 2015 copyright and the marketplace listing's Date First Available is 16 September 2003. It still ranks in the top 30 of its marketplace subcategory.
The record: DSLD 322603 copyright field and Amazon B000GWG8FS product details, 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.
- Green-e — Certified Renewable Energy status
- The complete seal list on this label, per the federal record. Green-e is a corporate renewable-energy purchasing claim; it certifies nothing about the capsule. Its participant register was not queried in this pass. The label's other environmental lines are in the same category — "Printed with vegetable based inks on 100% recyclable material" and "We buy 100% Certified Renewable Energy".
- "Gluten free" (unqualified) status
- The label makes an unqualified gluten-free claim with no certifier at all, and the marketplace title repeats it. The same brand certifies that exact claim through NSF on a different product in its own range, so this is a choice rather than a capability gap.
- The panel as an image
- gardenoflife.com returns HTTP 403 behind Akamai, and DSLD's own label PDFs and thumbnails return 403 to direct requests. The panel above is NIH's structured transcription, not an image-verified reading. An earlier pass in this project found two DSLD transcription errors on a product where brand images were available for comparison, so this panel should be read as federally transcribed rather than eyeballed.
- The marketplace buy-box price
- The listing returns HTTP 200 but renders its price asynchronously; the only price values in the static HTML belong to sponsored carousel items, and a second fetcher also failed. No marketplace price is published here.
- Any expiry potency
- There is none. Every potency statement on this label — the front-of-pack 15 billion, the marketing block, and the blend row's 5 billion — is qualified as at time of manufacture. No expiry number appears anywhere, so the front number is a ceiling with no floor under it.
- Per-organism CFU
- One 410 mg blend row covers 13 species plus two grasses. At an even split that is roughly 385 million per organism per capsule, or roughly 1.15 billion per organism per day at the 3-capsule dose — and the split is not disclosed.
- Any strain identity
- No ATCC, DSM, CNCM, NCIMB or CECT designator appears anywhere — not on the B. subtilis the entire Homeostatic Soil Organism pitch is built on, not on the S. boulardii, not on any of the other eleven.
- Any published literature on the product or its central concept
- Four spellings of the product name and four of the "Homeostatic Soil Organism" concept, plus the Poten-Zyme process, all return zero relevant records — with PubMed's own quotedphrasesnotfound diagnostics captured so the zero is reproducible rather than asserted. The naive queries are the trap here: "Primal Defense" returns 66 and "Homeostatic Soil Organism" returns 27, and in both cases PubMed silently discarded the quoted phrase and searched the component words instead.
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.
Count the capsules, then count the days.
The front of the bottle says “15 Billion CFU Daily” and “90 Capsules”. The Supplement Facts serving is one capsule at five billion, and the label’s own directions say to “begin with 1 capsule per day … and gradually increase to 1 capsule 3 times per day.” Both numbers are printed, so nothing is being hidden — but a shopper reading the front of this bottle reasonably reads ninety days at the advertised potency, and it is thirty. At the maintenance dose this is $1.68 a day.
Then ask when that fifteen billion is true. Every potency statement on the label — the front-of-pack figure, the marketing block, the blend row — is qualified “CFU count at time of manufacture.” There is no expiry number anywhere on this label. For scale, this brand’s own Dr. Formulated line guarantees potency at expiration, and a product torn down alongside this one discloses a 70% decline between the two endpoints. Assume nothing more than that some decay occurs and the fifteen billion is a ceiling with no floor underneath it.
The differentiator is the Homeostatic® Soil Organism — which is Bacillus subtilis, unnamed. No designator on it, none on the S. boulardii, none on any of the other eleven. Thirteen species, thirteen blanks. And S. boulardii’s human evidence base is overwhelmingly CNCM I-745, a code that does not appear here, so the 214 randomised trials behind that species do not reach this capsule.
Search for the concept itself and you meet the trap this project has already published once and cannot
publish again. "Primal Defense" returns 66 results and "Homeostatic Soil Organism" returns 27 —
and in both cases PubMed silently discarded the quoted phrase and searched the component words instead. The
diagnostics say so. Query the phrases properly, across four spellings each plus “Poten-Zyme”, and the count
is zero, every time.
Two things this label does better than its own marketplace listing, and they deserve saying. The label says “13 species.” The listing says “13 Strains”. In a category where that conflation is near-universal, Garden of Life’s regulatory copy gets it right and its retail copy does not — which is the reverse of the usual pattern. The label also says “supports normal bowel function”; the listing says “probiotics for constipation”. The bullets are visibly unmaintained, down to a “powder formula” line on a capsule product.
And one finding that points squarely at the reader this site is written for. This product contains 2 mg of iron per capsule — 6 mg a day at the maintenance dose — with the mandatory paediatric-poisoning warning attached. Adult men have no routine indication for supplemental iron, and men are the population in which iron overload matters. The dose is modest and this is a formulation mismatch rather than a safety alarm. But on a product with nothing else male about it, being quietly dosed with the one nutrient men generally should not supplement is the most concrete version of this was not designed for you on any label in its batch.