One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life RAW Probiotics Men — label audit
The advertised "$0.53/serving" beside "$47.99" is the per-capsule price. The government label record for the same UPC confirms 90 capsules, 30 servings, three capsules per serving — so the real cost is $1.60 a day, understated threefold on the brand's own page.
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
- D₂₇ founding teardown One of the 27 products taken apart at label level. That cohort is frozen and dated, so the audit’s published percentages cannot 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 31 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 31 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 31 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 31 = 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 31 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 / 31 = 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 | 85 billion CFU |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 31 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Marketed to men |
Total cultures 85 Billion CFU at end of Best Use 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.
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 (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus fermentum (correct name: Limosilactobacillus fermentum) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. 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 bulgaricus (correct name: Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus) | — 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 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 | — |
| 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 (correct name: Lentilactobacillus kefiri) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus parakefir (correct name: Lentilactobacillus parakefiri) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus brevis (correct name: Levilactobacillus brevis) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus lactis subsp. 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 321381 (opens in a new tab) captured Entered 2025-01-23, on-market. UPC 6 58010 11565 0, matching the live page's "Item 658010115650". Confirms 90 capsules, 30 servings, three capsules per serving.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 321382 (opens in a new tab) captured RAW Probiotics Women comparator, entered the same day, on-market.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260517144303 (opens in a new tab) captured Brand page capture carrying the "$47.99" and "$0.53/serving" pair.
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
$1.60 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $47.99 USD
- What that buys
- 90-capsule bottle (30 servings, 3 capsules per serving)
- 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 | 30 July 2026 |
| NSF Certified Gluten-free | Register unreachable | 30 July 2026 |
| Certified B Corporation | Register unreachable | 30 July 2026 |
| Arrive Alive! / 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.
DSLD 321381 records the seal under Seals/Symbols, so the label bears the mark. Whether the certification is current was not established: the product finder returned 404 to every automated route tried.
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.
On the label per DSLD 321381. nsf.org returns 403 to automated requests. Certifies absence of gluten only — not potency, identity or contaminants.
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.
On the label per DSLD 321381. bcorporation.net returns 403 to automated requests. A corporate-governance certification; it makes no claim about this product's contents.
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. Recorded here so they are not mistaken for one.
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 RAW Probiotics Women 85 Billion. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- One organism is exclusive to the men's product: Lactobacillus fermentum. Two are exclusive to the women's: L. reuteri and L. rhamnosus. Men's total 31 organisms, women's 32. DSLD 321381 versus DSLD 321382
- Probiotic blend 794 mg (men's) versus 764 mg (women's). DSLD 321381 versus DSLD 321382
- Vitamin and mineral panels are identical except calcium 18 mg versus 30 mg, magnesium 7 mg versus 8.4 mg, and pantothenic acid 1.92 mg versus 1.9 mg. DSLD 321381 versus DSLD 321382
What is identical across the pair
- 85 billion CFU at end of Best Use Date in both.
- The nested kefir culture is the same 22 organisms in both.
- Fruit & Veggie blend 207 mg and enzyme blend 56 mg in both.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 per-serving-price-is-per-capsule
The brand's own archived product page advertises "$47.99" and "$0.53/serving" side by side, while the government label record for the same UPC confirms 90 capsules, 30 servings and "Adults take 3 capsules per day, best taken as divided servings". The advertised per-serving price is the per-capsule price; the real cost is $1.60 a day, understated threefold. The control test holds: the same brand's Once Daily SKU, where one capsule is one serving, shows an arithmetically correct $1.23/serving.
The record: DSLD 321381 · Wayback 20260517144303 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 clinically-studied-species-on-label
The label itself reads: "85 Billion CFU, typically containing 31 Probiotics with clinically studied Species plus Eastern European Wild Kefir Culture." The brand has written the species-level qualifier into its own label — a concession, in its own words, that its substantiation is at species level, not strain level.
The record: DSLD 321381 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 typically-containing
The same label sentence says "typically containing 31 Probiotics". The organism roster is not guaranteed batch to batch. This sits in direct tension with the page's claim that the product is made "so that what you see on the label is what you get in the bottle".
The record: DSLD 321381 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 dangling-footnote-on-headline-cfu
The page advertises "85 billion live cultures¹". The character ¹ appears exactly once in the entire rendered page — verified by character count, not by eye — with no footnote text anywhere.
The record: Wayback 20260517144303 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 prostate-claim-with-no-prostate-ingredient
"Supports healthy stress levels, as well as prostate and heart health" is claimed for a panel containing no saw palmetto, no lycopene, no zinc and no beta-sitosterol. The prostate claim rests on the probiotic blend alone, and no organism on this label carries any prostate evidence.
The record: DSLD 321381 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 proprietary-blend-794mg-31-organisms
A single 794 mg "Raw Whole Food Probiotic Blend" across 31 organisms with no per-organism CFU.
The record: DSLD 321381 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 7 eight-yeasts-counted-as-probiotic-strains
Eight of the 31 organisms are yeasts, counted toward the "31 probiotic strains" and "record-setting 30+ probiotic strains" headlines. One of them, Debaryomyces hansenii, has a published impaired-mucosal-healing signal.
The record: DSLD 321381 · PMID 33707263 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 8 contains-dairy-in-a-gut-health-product
The label declares "Contains: Dairy." in a product whose enzyme blend implicitly courts the lactose-intolerant buyer.
The record: DSLD 321381 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 cold-chain-buried
Storage reads "Store in a dry place at 71 Degrees F (22 Degrees C) or below. Best if refrigerated." The CFU guarantee is conditioned on "recommended storage conditions" — which matters for anyone ordering this online in summer.
The record: DSLD 321381 — 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
- DSLD 321381 records the seal under Seals/Symbols, so the label bears the mark. Whether the certification is current was not established: the product finder returned 404 to every automated route tried.
- NSF Certified Gluten-free status
- On the label per DSLD 321381. nsf.org returns 403 to automated requests. Certifies absence of gluten only — not potency, identity or contaminants.
- Certified B Corporation status
- On the label per DSLD 321381. bcorporation.net returns 403 to automated requests. A corporate-governance certification; it makes no claim about this product's contents.
- Arrive Alive! / Potency Promise status
- Garden of Life trademarks, not third-party certifications. Recorded here so they are not mistaken for one.
- Funding source and author conflicts of interest for PMID 18272539 and PMID 21477383
- Not retrievable from the abstracts, and full text was not pulled. The characterisation of one named author's industry connection was dropped rather than published unconfirmed — it names a real person.
- Whether any of the three claimed certifications is current
- All three issuers' registers refused automated queries (404, 403, 403).
- Per-organism CFU across the 31 organisms
- Not disclosed. Eighty-five billion spread across 31 organisms averages ~2.7 billion each, but nothing on the label prevents a distribution where one cheap organism carries almost all of it.
- A price read from a live retailer listing
- The price here comes from the brand's archived page, so it is as old as that capture and may not be what the product sells for today.
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.
This is the cleanest consumer-facing finding in the whole 27-product set, because it is the brand’s own arithmetic against the brand’s own label.
The archived product page shows $47.99 and $0.53/serving next to each other. The NIH label record for the same UPC says 90 capsules, 30 servings, and “Adults take 3 capsules per day, best taken as divided servings.” $47.99 ÷ 90 = $0.533. The site is dividing by capsules and calling the result a serving. The real cost is $1.60 a day.
It is not a typo. The control test rules that out: on Garden of Life’s Once Daily men’s SKU, where one capsule is one serving, the site’s “$1.23/serving” is arithmetically correct. The error appears specifically where the serving is more than one capsule.
The second finding is on the label rather than the till. Garden of Life prints, in its own words, “85 Billion CFU, typically containing 31 Probiotics with clinically studied Species”. Two admissions in one sentence: the roster is typical rather than guaranteed, and the substantiation is at species level. Under the field’s own consensus, a species name is not a tested agent. The brand wrote that down itself.
Credit where it is due, and it is real: the CFU count is guaranteed to the end of the Best Use Date, which is the honest form of the claim, and — unlike the Dr. Formulated line — this formula does have one male-exclusive organism, L. fermentum, which is the organism the men’s claim points at. The formula and the claim are internally consistent. What is missing is the strain name that would let anyone check.