One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life RAW Probiotics Colon Care 50 Billion (Shelf-Stable, 30 ct) — label audit
Thirty of the 33 organisms on this label are covered by one sentence the brand prints itself — "Represents strains typically found in eastern european wild kefir culture." You are not promised those thirty organisms; you are promised what is typically found in a wild culture. The same page says "what you see on the label is what you get in the bottle."
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
28.8 out of 100
Rank 124 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score.
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 | 3 of 33 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 3 / 33 = 0.0909 | 0.021818 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 33 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 33 = 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 33 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 / 33 = 0.0303 | 0.006061 |
| 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 |
0.247879 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.2882. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 28.8 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 across the Colon Care Blend |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 33 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"At expiration date under recommended storage conditions. Store in a cool, dry place."
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bifidobacterium lactis | SD-5219 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | SD-5221 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis | SD-5674 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | — 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 | — |
| Lactobacillus bulgaricus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus casei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus fermentum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus helveticus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus kefirgranum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus cremoris | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Streptococcus thermophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus kefir | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus parakefir | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus lactis biovar diacetylactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Leuconostoc lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Leuconostoc mesenteroides | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Leuconostoc cremoris | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Leuconostoc dextranicum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Kluyveromyces marxianus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Brettanomyces anomalus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Debaryomyces hansenii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Saccharomyces unisporus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Saccharomyces turicensis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Saccharomyces exiguus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Torulaspora delbrueckii | — 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 274777 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market. UPC cross-check passed — the brand page's "Item 658010123327" matches DSLD UPC 6 58010 12332 7, confirming this is the shelf-stable variant and not the refrigerated sibling.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260517152354 (opens in a new tab) captured Source for price and marketing copy. The brand's stated unit price of "$1.28/serving" is accurate here, because this SKU is one capsule per serving.
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
$1.28 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $38.39 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule 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 | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| NSF Certified Gluten-Free | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| Certified B Corporation | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| "Arrive Alive!" and "Potency Promise" | Not checked | not checked |
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 returns HTTP 200 but exposes no queryable verified-product database. Its only queryable API indexes blog posts — a search for "garden of life" returned ten blog articles and two staff bios and zero product records. Not evidence of absence.
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 on both the product-listing page and the API path.
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 directory returns HTTP 403.
"Arrive Alive!" and "Potency Promise"
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Brand-owned marks, not third-party certifications. They appear on the refrigerated sibling record.
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 represents-strains-typically-found-in
The label's own words, covering 30 of the 33 organisms. This is a batch-composition disclaimer: the buyer is promised what is typically present in a wild kefir culture, not a defined roster. It is a line-wide convention at this brand, and it sits in direct tension with the same page's claim that "Raw Probiotics is created below 40F and 30% humidity so that what you see on the label is what you get in the bottle."
The record: DSLD 274777, label statement, verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 probiotic-blend-mass-not-disclosed-at-all
Milligrams are printed for the enzyme blend and the fruit and veg blend but not for the probiotics — the one row a buyer is paying for.
The record: DSLD 274777
Finding 3 thirty-three-strains-counts-thirty-species
Only 3 organisms are identified below species level. The rest are species names inside a wild culture. Duplicate taxa inflate the count further — B. lactis appears three times (SD-5219, SD-5674, and unnamed in the kefir culture) and L. acidophilus twice.
The record: DSLD 274777, 3 designated organisms plus 30 species-only rows
Finding 4 clinically-studied-strains-on-the-buy-box
"Clinically studied strains to promote regular, healthy and comfortable movements" is attached to three accession codes, two of which return no human trial under either spelling, and thirty organisms with no identity at all. The brand also claims a "record-setting 30+ probiotic strains" with no cited basis, and strain count is not an efficacy variable.
The record: Wayback 20260517152354, buy-box copy verbatim
Finding 5 eight-yeasts-shipped-as-probiotics
Including Debaryomyces hansenii, which has a published impaired-mucosal-healing signal in mice and enrichment in human Crohn's tissue. Reported at that strength — a reasonable exclusion for readers with IBD, not a consumer alarm.
The record: PMID 33707263 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 contains-milk-in-a-gut-health-product
Bulgarian yogurt concentrate is the matrix. The product's own enzyme blend includes lactase, which tells you who the formulators expected to be taking it.
The record: DSLD 274777, allergen statement
Finding 7 shelf-stable-and-refrigerated-variants-are-easy-to-confuse
This SKU (UPC 6 58010 12332 7, DSLD 274777) and its refrigerated sibling (UPC 6 58010 11665 7, DSLD 274807) share a name and a marketing page family but carry different storage terms and different UPCs. A buyer comparing prices across retailers can easily land on the wrong one.
The record: DSLD 274777 versus DSLD 274807 — 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 returns HTTP 200 but exposes no queryable verified-product database. Its only queryable API indexes blog posts — a search for "garden of life" returned ten blog articles and two staff bios and zero product records. Not evidence of absence.
- NSF Certified Gluten-Free status
- nsf.org returns HTTP 403 on both the product-listing page and the API path.
- Certified B Corporation status
- bcorporation.net directory returns HTTP 403.
- "Arrive Alive!" and "Potency Promise" status
- Brand-owned marks, not third-party certifications. They appear on the refrigerated sibling record.
- The mass of the probiotic blend
- Not disclosed anywhere. The label prints milligrams for the enzyme blend (50 mg) and the fruit and veg blend (45 mg) and no figure at all for the probiotic row — less disclosure than the brand's own Dr. Formulated line, which prints 160 to 300 mg for the equivalent row.
- Any live brand page
- gardenoflife.com returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching, confirmed on two independent paths. An Internet Archive snapshot was used.
- Any live Amazon price
- Amazon renders prices client-side and served captchas to direct fetches.
- Any certification, at any issuer register
- NSF 403, B Corp 403, Non-GMO Project has no queryable product database. All marks are brand-asserted.
- Per-organism CFU
- One aggregate 50 billion across 33 organisms, with no Lacto or Bifido subtotals either.
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 whole product is in one sentence the brand prints on its own label: “Represents strains typically found in eastern european wild kefir culture.”
That qualifier covers thirty of the thirty-three organisms this product counts. You are not promised those thirty. You are promised what is typically present in a wild culture — which is a different offer, and an honest one to have printed, except that the same brand’s page for this product says “Raw Probiotics is created below 40º F and 30% humidity so that what you see on the label is what you get in the bottle.”
Three organisms are actually identified, by ATCC-style accession codes, and those codes are real — SD-5219 traces into published trials as B. lactis Bl-04. The other two return nothing under either spelling. So of “33 probiotic strains”, one has a locatable human trial.
Two further things the label does not tell you. The probiotic blend has no disclosed mass at all — milligrams are printed for the enzyme blend and the fruit and veg blend, but not for the probiotics. And eight of the organisms are yeasts, one of which (Debaryomyces hansenii) has a published impaired-healing signal in mice and enrichment in Crohn’s tissue. That is not an alarm; it is a reason a reader with IBD might want to know what is in a capsule, which the front of the bottle does not say.
Credit where it is owed: the CFU is guaranteed at the expiration date, printed on the panel, and the brand’s per-serving arithmetic on this SKU is correct.