One product, one panel, one record.
HUM Nutrition Gut Instinct Daily Probiotic — label audit
Every piece of marketing says "25 Billion CFU". The regulated panel says "25 billion organisms at time of manufacture". CFU is a viability measure that counts cells which grow; "organisms" is not a defined potency unit and commits the brand to nothing about whether they are alive. The panel is the legally operative text and it is the weaker of the two claims.
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
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- 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.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
37.5 out of 100
Rank 105 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 the whole rubric: this record answers all five questions below, so nothing is renormalised away and the divisor is the full 1.00. That share travels with every score on this site and is never dropped — a score over part of the rubric’s 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 | 2 of 10 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 2 / 10 = 0.2000 | 0.0480 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 10 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 10 = 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 | 2 of 10 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. | 2 / 10 = 0.2000 | 0.0400 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification found on the issuer’s own public register. Read the scope before reading the mark: most certify one narrow property. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.1400 |
0.374667 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.3747. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 37.5 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 | 25 billion organisms at time of manufacture (the panel does not use the word CFU; the bottle front, the brand page and the marketplace title all say "25 Billion CFU") |
| What that count is measured against | At manufacture only |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 10 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"†This product is formulated to deliver a potency of 25 billion organisms 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis | UABla-12 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "UABla-12"[All Fields] AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
| Lactobacilus plantarum (correct name: Lactobacillus plantarum) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | Lpc-37 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Lpc-37"[All Fields] AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
| Lactobacilus rhamnosus (correct name: Lactobacillus rhamnosus) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Streptococcus thermophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus salivarius | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacilus casei (correct name: Lactobacillus casei) | — 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.
- Photograph of the printed panel — sanity-82d2d26ea3d6e32a295ad21b45c97a32db4b2792-2048x2048.jpghttps://cdn.sanity.io/images/wc4lcg7n/develop/82d2d26ea3d6e32a295ad21b45c97a32db4b2792-2048x2048.jpg — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own product-image JPEG, transcribed by hand. The panel exists nowhere as machine-readable text — not in the page HTML and not in any federal database.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — humnutrition-product-6-gut-instinct-2026-07-31https://www.humnutrition.com/product/6/gut-instinct — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Source for price, JSON-LD gtin14 00855514005191, the return policy schema, the storage FAQ and the claim copy. Note the path: /products/<handle> and /product/<handle> both return a soft-404 with HTTP 404 and a full-size body; the working path uses the numeric product id. A naive crawler records this product as missing.
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, 2 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
$0.90 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $27.00 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule daily). $21.60 on subscription, which the brand describes as skip, pause or cancel anytime.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.humnutrition.com/product/6/gut-instinct — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Clean Label Project Certified | Confirmed at issuer | 31 July 2026 |
| Non-GMO Project Verified | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| "Triple Tested & 3rd Party Validated for Purity & Quality" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
Clean Label Project Certified
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
Verified at the issuer, from the certifier's own certificate PDF rather than the brand's word. Certificate numbers PNV0002-2022D-15 and SPP0012-2022E-11; certified entity Hum Nutrition; certifying body Ellipse Analytics of Denver, Colorado; effective 15 April 2022 and issued 11 February 2026. The product listing line reads, verbatim, "Gut Instinct | 855514005191 | CLP Certified | 05/09/2022", and that UPC matches the brand's own JSON-LD gtin14 00855514005191. Scope trap that must travel with the mark — Clean Label Project certifies against contaminant thresholds such as heavy metals and pesticides. It does not verify CFU count, strain identity, viability or potency at expiry. It tells you what is not in the capsule; it tells you nothing about whether the 25 billion are there.
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.
Seal is on the label image. nongmoproject.org returns HTTP 403 to automation on every path tried. Recorded as unverified, never as "does not hold it".
"Triple Tested & 3rd Party Validated for Purity & Quality"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
No lab named, no certificate of analysis published, no batch lookup offered.
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.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 panel-says-organisms-while-all-marketing-says-cfu
The regulated panel says "25 billion organisms at time of manufacture". The bottle front, the brand page and the marketplace title say "25 Billion CFU". CFU counts cells that grow; "organisms" is not a defined potency unit and does not commit the brand to viability. The panel is the operative text and it is the weaker claim. Note also the verb: "formulated to deliver" describes what went into the batch, not what is in the capsule you swallow.
The record: Panel JPEG on cdn.sanity.io transcribed 2026-07-31, versus humnutrition.com product 6 and the Amazon B079V1NQ9M title — open ithttps://www.humnutrition.com/product/6/gut-instinct — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 at-manufacture-basis-beside-a-brand-faq-admitting-die-off
The panel's basis is at manufacture with no expiry floor, and the brand's own FAQ says "we do suggest that you refrigerate it after opening to slow down the die-off rate of the live strain bacteria." That is the brand telling you, in its own words, that the organisms are dying in the bottle. There is no disclosed lower bound on what the last capsule contains.
The record: Panel footnote and humnutrition.com FAQ, both verbatim, 2026-07-31
Finding 3 eight-of-ten-organisms-are-species-only
Two organisms carry a designator and eight do not. The brand demonstrably knows how to name a strain — it does so twice on the same panel line — and chose not to for the other eight. A species name does not identify a tested agent.
The record: Panel JPEG on cdn.sanity.io, transcribed 2026-07-31; anchor PMID 29868585 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 clinically-tested-actives-over-an-eighty-percent-anonymous-blend
"Clinically Tested Actives" is a blanket product claim. The actives here are a 78 mg proprietary blend with eight of ten organisms unidentified, and the two identified strains' trials used single-strain doses of 10 billion and 17.5 billion CFU — 40% and 70% of this product's entire declared potency. No organism in this product can be shown to be present at a dose matching any trial for the outcome the product claims.
The record: humnutrition.com product 6 page copy versus the panel; PMIDs 32019158 and 33385020 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 clean-label-project-mark-reads-as-a-potency-mark-and-is-not-one
This is the one certification in its batch that survives contact with the issuer's own register, and it certifies contaminant thresholds. It says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, viability or potency at expiry. Consumers reliably read a certification seal on a probiotic as a potency mark.
The record: Clean Label Project certificate PNV0002-2022D-15 / SPP0012-2022E-11, retrieved 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 retailer-listings-circulate-designators-the-label-does-not-carry
Several third-party listings publish a fully designated ten-strain roster for this product — UALa-01, UALp-05, BL03 AF, Lr-32, St-21, Ls-33, Lc-11 and others. That list is not on HUM's current Supplement Facts panel and is not on HUM's own product page, and it could not be sourced to any HUM document. Anyone citing this product from retailer copy will publish strain designators the brand does not claim. If it turns out to be a legacy panel, HUM reduced its disclosure over time, which is a larger story than this one; that was not resolved here.
The record: Third-party retailer listings versus humnutrition.com product 6 and the transcribed panel, all 2026-07-31
Finding 7 eighty-three-person-satisfaction-survey-styled-as-evidence
"90% were satisfied or very satisfied with their results" carries the footnote "Based on a survey of 83 consumers of Gut Instinct who purchased for 3 months and took daily and as recommended." A satisfaction survey of 83 self-selected purchasers, presented at the same visual weight as clinical claims. The footnote is honest; the placement is not.
The record: humnutrition.com product 6, claim and footnote read verbatim 2026-07-31
Finding 8 most-expensive-per-billion-cfu-in-its-batch
$0.036 per billion per day at retail on the at-manufacture basis — roughly 3.3x the two other products torn down alongside it. The comparison is not decisive on its own, and this file says so: cost per billion CFU is the metric that means least when the organisms behind the number are unidentified. It is worth recording because HUM is the expensive one and the identification is still only 2 of 10.
The record: $27.00 / 30 servings / 25 billion, computed against the same-batch figures, 2026-07-31
Finding 9 a-womens-probiotic-exists-at-this-brand-and-a-mens-does-not
From the Clean Label Project's own certified-product listing, which enumerates 34 HUM SKUs by UPC — Gut Instinct (855514005191) is unisex, Private Party (850008331275) is HUM's women's-specific probiotic with vaginal and urinary positioning, and Skin Squad Pre+Probiotic (850008331282) is a skin product. HUM has a women's-specific probiotic and no men's-specific probiotic. Nothing in Gut Instinct is male-specific — no prostate ingredient, no androgen-related ingredient, no urinary ingredient, no organism chosen for male physiology. The marketplace title is "HUM Gut Instinct Daily Probiotics for Women and Men" and the brand claims male specificity nowhere; this SKU is in the men's universe because third-party listicles put it there. A male-outcome PubMed check on the two identified designators returns zero on two independent spellings.
The record: Clean Label Project certified-product listing, 34 HUM SKUs by UPC, plus two PubMed male-outcome queries, all 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 10 label-quality-control-on-a-testing-rigour-proposition
The panel renders "Lactobacilus" with a single l in at least three places while spelling "Lactobacillus" correctly elsewhere in the same list. Nomenclature is pre-Zheng-2020 throughout. Cosmetic, but it is on the regulated panel of a product whose selling proposition is testing rigour.
The record: Panel JPEG on cdn.sanity.io, transcribed 2026-07-31; nomenclature reference 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 is on the label image. nongmoproject.org returns HTTP 403 to automation on every path tried. Recorded as unverified, never as "does not hold it".
- "Triple Tested & 3rd Party Validated for Purity & Quality" status
- No lab named, no certificate of analysis published, no batch lookup offered.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- Per-organism CFU for any of the ten
- The entire blend is one row — "Proprietary Blend of 10 strains of Probiotic Bacteria, 78 mg". No organism has a declared quantity, so any of the ten could be a token dose.
- Any lower bound on potency at the end of shelf life
- The panel's basis is at manufacture and no expiry floor is stated anywhere. The brand's own FAQ then says, verbatim, "we do suggest that you refrigerate it after opening to slow down the die-off rate of the live strain bacteria." There is a disclosed die-off and no disclosed floor.
- Whether the undesignated Lactobacillus acidophilus is DDS-1
- It matters. If it is DDS-1, HUM could cite the stronger arm of PMID 32019158 and does not. If it is not, the UABla-12 evidence stands alone at a dose this product cannot demonstrate. The label does not commit and the brand was not asked.
- A federal label record
- DSLD holds 22 HUM-brand records, including two of HUM's other pre/probiotics, and Gut Instinct is not among them. Five query spellings were run; the only "Gut Instinct" DSLD returns is Reset/360 Gut Instinct (record 249193), a different brand. DSLD is voluntary, so this is an absence in an archive, not a finding about the product — but it means the panel rests on brand imagery alone, with the Clean Label Project certificate as the independent corroborator of SKU identity.
- The marketplace price
- Amazon returned only head and metadata to automated fetching. The brand's own JSON-LD price is used throughout.
- The Non-GMO Project mark, at the issuer
- nongmoproject.org returns HTTP 403 to automation on every path tried. Unverified, not refuted.
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 finding here is one word, and you only see it if you read the panel instead of the bottle.
Everywhere HUM advertises this product it says 25 Billion CFU — the bottle front, the brand page, the marketplace title. The regulated Supplement Facts panel says something else: “formulated to deliver a potency of 25 billion organisms at time of manufacture.” CFU is a viability measure; it counts cells that grow. “Organisms” is not a defined potency unit and commits the brand to nothing about whether they are alive. And “formulated to deliver” describes what went into the batch, not what is in the capsule. The panel is the legally operative text, and it is the weaker of the two claims.
Then the brand’s own FAQ closes the loop: “we do suggest that you refrigerate it after opening to slow down the die-off rate of the live strain bacteria.” An at-manufacture basis, no expiry floor anywhere, and a written acknowledgement that the organisms are dying in the bottle. There is no disclosed lower bound on what the last capsule contains. That FAQ answer is honest to the point of self-harm, and it is the cleanest self-incrimination in its batch.
On strains, HUM is half-good and the half is instructive. Two of ten organisms carry designators — UABla-12 and Lpc-37 — and both have real human trials. Neither trial fits this product. UABla-12’s IBS trial dosed 10 billion CFU of that strain alone, which would be 40% of the entire ten-organism blend; Lpc-37’s dosed 17.5 billion, 70% of it, for stress and anxiety rather than digestion, and missed its primary endpoint. The split is not disclosed, so neither can be checked. The other eight organisms are species-only — and the brand demonstrably knows how to name a strain, because it does so twice on the same line.
One more trap, aimed at anyone else researching this SKU: several retailer listings publish a fully designated ten-strain roster for this product. It is not on HUM’s panel and not on HUM’s own page. Cite the retailer and you publish designators the brand does not claim.
Credit where it is real: the CFU basis is disclosed on the panel rather than buried; there is a full allergen declaration; the return policy is in machine-readable schema; dosing is one capsule. And the Clean Label Project certification is genuine and checkable at the issuer — the certificate PDF names the certifying body, the certificate numbers and this product’s UPC. It is the only mark in its batch that survives contact with a register. It also certifies contaminants, not potency: it tells you what is not in the capsule, and nothing at all about whether the 25 billion are.