One product, one panel, one record.
Garden of Life RAW Probiotics Ultimate Care 100 Billion (Shelf-Stable, 30 ct) — label audit
Amazon sells this product under a title containing the words "Clinically Studied Strains". Thirty of its 34 organisms have no identity beyond a species name and are covered by the label's own "represents strains typically found in" qualifier, and three of the four that are identified return zero human-trial hits under two spellings each.
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
29.5 out of 100
Rank 123 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 | 4 of 34 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 4 / 34 = 0.1176 | 0.028235 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 34 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 34 = 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 34 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 / 34 = 0.0294 | 0.005882 |
| 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 |
0.254118 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.2955. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 29.5 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 | 100 Billion CFU across the Replenish Blend |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 34 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"100 billion CFU at expiration date under recommended storage conditions." Storage — "No refrigeration required. 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 animalis lactis | BL-818 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | SD-5221 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | SD-5218 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis | SD-5220 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| 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 297600 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market. UPC cross-check passed — the brand page's "Item 658010123334" matches DSLD UPC 6 58010 12333 4, confirming the shelf-stable variant. The refrigerated sibling is DSLD 297590.
- Internet Archive capture — 20251208004856 (opens in a new tab) captured Source for price. The brand's stated "$1.60/serving" is accurate on this SKU.
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
$1.60 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $47.99 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 |
Non-GMO Project Verified
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
nongmoproject.org exposes no queryable verified-product database; its only queryable API indexes blog posts.
NSF Certified Gluten-Free
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
nsf.org returns HTTP 403.
Certified B Corporation
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
bcorporation.net directory returns HTTP 403.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
This brand sells no women’s counterpart to this product, so there is no diff to run.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 clinically-studied-strains-is-in-the-product-title
Thirty of 34 organisms have no identity at all, and three of the four designators return zero human-trial hits under two spellings each. One organism in this product — SD-5220 — traces to a published trial.
The record: Amazon B07CZFZTCW title; PubMed screens on BL-818, SD-5221, SD-5218 all returning 0
Finding 2 represents-strains-typically-found-in
The kefir row carries the qualifier inline — "represents strains typically found in eastern european wild kefir culture, containing…" — covering 30 of the 34 organisms. The refrigerated sibling record carries the same sentence.
The record: DSLD 297600, and DSLD 297590 for the sibling — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 probiotic-blend-mass-not-disclosed
No milligram figure for the probiotic row at all, while the enzyme blend (50 mg) and the fruit and veg blend (45 mg) both carry one.
The record: DSLD 297600
Finding 4 thirty-four-strains-includes-repeat-taxa
B. animalis lactis appears as BL-818 and again unnamed in the kefir culture; B. lactis also as SD-5220; L. acidophilus as SD-5221 and again unnamed. At least three of the "34" are repeat taxa.
The record: DSLD 297600
Finding 5 the-same-at-expiry-sentence-covers-a-line-with-different-storage-terms
Accurate for this shelf-stable SKU, which needs no refrigeration. The refrigerated sibling (DSLD 297590) carries the same at-expiry guarantee but conditions it on "Best if refrigerated. Store in a dry place at 71F (22C) or below" — materially harder to meet for anyone buying online in summer.
The record: DSLD 297600 versus DSLD 297590 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 eight-yeasts-and-contains-milk
The same wild-kefir roster as the brand's Colon Care SKU, including Debaryomyces hansenii, and Bulgarian yogurt concentrate as the matrix.
The record: DSLD 297600 · PMID 33707263 — open it (opens in a new tab)
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- Non-GMO Project Verified status
- nongmoproject.org exposes no queryable verified-product database; its only queryable API indexes blog posts.
- NSF Certified Gluten-Free status
- nsf.org returns HTTP 403.
- Certified B Corporation status
- bcorporation.net directory returns HTTP 403.
- The mass of the probiotic blend
- Not disclosed. 100 billion CFU across 34 organisms with no milligram figure and no allocation.
- Any live brand page
- gardenoflife.com returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching on two independent paths.
- Any live Amazon price
- Amazon serves captchas to direct fetches.
- Any certification, at any issuer register
- NSF 403, B Corp 403, Non-GMO Project not queryable.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Amazon sells this product with the words “Clinically Studied Strains” in the title. The label carries 34 organisms. Thirty of them are a wild kefir culture the label itself describes as “represents strains typically found in” — a batch-composition disclaimer, not a roster. Of the four organisms that are actually identified, three return nothing under two spellings each. One, SD-5220, traces into a published trial.
That is the honest count: one of 34.
There is a methodological lesson in it worth keeping. The first-pass screen returned zero for SD-5219 and SD-5220; the second query, without the hyphen, returned real papers. Stopping at one query would have produced the false claim that no RAW designator has any human trial. These codes are genuine ATCC accessions, not invented marketing codes, and that is a materially better position than no designator at all — even when most of them lead nowhere.
This SKU also settles a question about the brand’s pricing. Garden of Life advertised RAW Probiotics Men at “$0.53/serving” when the true cost was $1.60, because the site divided by capsules instead of servings. This product costs the same $47.99 on the same template — but it is one capsule per serving, and here the arithmetic is right. The bug appears if and only if a serving is more than one capsule.