One product, one panel, one record.
MaryRuth Organics Organic Liquid Probiotic, 4 oz (adult SKU) — label audit
The marketing copy reads, verbatim, "Our oil-based probiotic blend contains up to 2 billion CFU per serving." "Up to" converts a specification into a ceiling — a bottle delivering 200 million CFU satisfies it. That is weaker than an at-manufacture claim, because at-manufacture at least asserts a floor at one point in time.
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 Audited 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes and contributes to none of them.
- 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
12.5 out of 100
Rank 145 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 | 1 of 13 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 1 / 13 = 0.0769 | 0.018462 |
| 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 "none-stated": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated no, basis reaches expiry no — 1 of 3. | 1 / 3 = 0.3333 | 0.073333 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 1 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. | 1 / 13 = 0.0769 | 0.015385 |
| 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 |
0.107179 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.1246. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 12.5 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 | Proprietary Probiotic Blend — 15 mg (2 Billion CFU) per 3 mL adult serving |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 13 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
A CFU number appears with no temporal basis of any kind. A count with no basis is not a quantity; there is no date at which it is claimed to be true.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B. coagulans | Unique IS-2 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Bacillus coagulans Unique IS-2 randomized" |
| L. acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. rhamnosus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. salivarius | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. casei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| S. thermophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. infantis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. bifidum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. breve | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. longum | — 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 — Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpghttps://www.maryruthorganics.com/cdn/shop/files/Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own Supplement Facts image, published legibly and transcribed in full. It is tri-dosed by age - 1 to 3 Years (0.75 mL, about 160 servings), 4 to 13 Years (1.5 mL, about 80 servings) and 14+ Years (3 mL, about 40 servings) - with Calories, Total Fat, Saturated Fat and the Proprietary Probiotic Blend given per column, the blend reading 3.75 mg (500 Million CFU) / 7.5 mg (1 Billion CFU) / 15 mg (2 Billion CFU) respectively. Other Ingredients - Organic Medium Chain Triglycerides Oil and Organic Alfalfa Grass. All 13 organism names were read from this image.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — maryruthorganics-com-pdp-2026-07-31https://www.maryruthorganics.com/products/organic-vegan-liquid-probiotics — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Source of the pricing ($44.95 one-time, $40.46 subscribed), the GTIN 850029392071 and SKU DR-AD-PRO-OG-SF-4OZ-DC-02, the certification claims, and the "up to 2 billion CFU per serving" wording that appears in the PDP copy and in the product schema but not on the panel.
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
$1.12 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $44.95 USD
- What that buys
- 4 oz bottle. Adult serving (14+) is 3 mL and the panel states about 40 adult servings per container. GTIN 850029392071, SKU DR-AD-PRO-OG-SF-4OZ-DC-02.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.maryruthorganics.com/products/organic-vegan-liquid-probiotics — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| USDA Organic | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
USDA Organic
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
This is the one certification claim in its audited batch that is backed by a federal scheme with a public register, so it is the most checkable claim there - it simply was not machine-readable in this pass. The USDA Organic Integrity Database is a Blazor single-page application and three API endpoint shapes all returned the app shell rather than data. Recorded as brand-asserted and unverified at the issuer. This page does not state or imply that MaryRuth lacks USDA Organic certification, and the claim should be re-checked by hand.
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 up-to-two-billion-cfu-is-a-ceiling-not-a-floor
Verbatim from the PDP and the product schema - "Proprietary Probiotic Blend - Our oil-based probiotic blend contains up to 2 billion CFU per serving." "Up to" converts the number from a specification into a maximum. A product delivering 200 million CFU satisfies "up to 2 billion". This is weaker than an at-manufacture claim, because at-manufacture at least asserts a floor at one point in time.
The record: maryruthorganics.com PDP copy and product schema, verbatim, read 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.maryruthorganics.com/products/organic-vegan-liquid-probiotics — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 cfu-basis-unstated-on-the-panel
The panel prints "(2 Billion CFU)" with no temporal qualifier of any kind - not at manufacture, not at expiry. A count with no basis has no date at which it is claimed to be true.
The record: Panel image Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 3 proprietary-blend-across-thirteen-organisms
15 mg and 2 billion CFU across 13 organisms, printed as one line and labelled a Proprietary Probiotic Blend explicitly. No per-organism allocation.
The record: Panel image Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg, adult column (14+ years, 3 mL), transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 4 the-headline-strain-is-necessarily-dosed-below-its-own-trial-dose
The brand's claims lean on Unique IS-2 - "Clinically studied Bacillus coagulans Unique IS-2 also helps support gut function". Unique IS-2's published trials use 2 billion CFU of Unique IS-2 alone. Here 2 billion is the total across all 13 organisms, so the Unique IS-2 fraction is a part of that total and is necessarily smaller than the trial dose. The arithmetic is certain; the exact fraction is not disclosed.
The record: Panel proprietary-blend line against the Unique IS-2 trial literature - PMIDs 39866999, 35249118, 25584177, and this project's earlier records PMID 31434935 and PMID 29695183 - read 2026-07-31
Finding 5 twelve-of-thirteen-organisms-are-species-only
The copy says "13 unique probiotic strains". Twelve of the thirteen are identified to species only, with no designator to look up. One - B. coagulans Unique IS-2 - carries a real strain identity.
The record: Panel image Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg, all 13 organism lines transcribed, 2026-07-31
Finding 6 an-adult-buyer-is-buying-a-product-formulated-for-ages-one-plus
The panel is tri-dosed by age from a single formula - 0.75 mL for 1 to 3 years, 1.5 mL for 4 to 13, 3 mL for 14+. The adult dose is four times the toddler dose of the identical liquid. That is not a defect in itself, and the brand states it openly, but a man buying a men's probiotic should know he is buying a whole-family product with the serving size scaled up.
The record: Panel image Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg, three-column age dosing, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 7 three-grams-of-saturated-fat-per-adult-serving
The adult serving carries 3 g total fat, all of it saturated - it is an MCT-oil suspension. Minor, and a real macronutrient load that the benefit copy does not mention.
The record: Panel image Organic_Liquid_Probiotic_4oz_Supplement_Facts_Maryruths.jpg, 14+ column - Calories 25, Total Fat 3 g, Saturated Fat 3 g, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 8 no-government-label-record-for-the-adult-sku
Three DSLD queries return nothing for the adult SKU, while MaryRuth's infant and toddler liquid probiotics are recorded (274593, 327722, 298474, 327714). The brand files labels with NIH and has not filed this one.
The record: DSLD v9 queries "MaryRuth", "Mary Ruth Liquid Probiotic", "Organic Vegan Liquid Probiotic", all run 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.
- USDA Organic status
- This is the one certification claim in its audited batch that is backed by a federal scheme with a public register, so it is the most checkable claim there - it simply was not machine-readable in this pass. The USDA Organic Integrity Database is a Blazor single-page application and three API endpoint shapes all returned the app shell rather than data. Recorded as brand-asserted and unverified at the issuer. This page does not state or imply that MaryRuth lacks USDA Organic certification, and the claim should be re-checked by hand.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- How the 2 billion CFU is split across the 13 organisms
- Not disclosed. The panel prints a single "Proprietary Probiotic Blend" line of 15 mg (2 Billion CFU) for the adult serving, with no per-organism allocation. That is what makes the dose statement about the headline strain a floor-less one - Unique IS-2 is necessarily below its own trial dose, and by how much cannot be established.
- The USDA Organic certification
- The USDA Organic Integrity Database is a Blazor single-page application; three endpoint shapes returned the app shell rather than data. The register is public and the claim is genuinely checkable - it was simply not machine-readable here. Nothing on this page says MaryRuth lacks it.
- Any government label record for the adult SKU
- None exists. Three DSLD queries were run - "MaryRuth", "Mary Ruth Liquid Probiotic", "Organic Vegan Liquid Probiotic". Only the infant and toddler liquid probiotics are recorded (274593, 327722, 298474, 327714). The brand files labels with NIH and has not filed this one.
- Any named third-party laboratory
- None appears. No NSF, USP or Informed Choice mark is claimed and no laboratory is named, so there is nothing to query. The consumer-facing guarantee on the page is a "30-Day Happiness Guarantee", which is a commercial promise rather than a quality one.
- The price of the 2 oz travel size
- Not verified in this pass. Only the 4 oz bottle is priced on this page.
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.
“Up to 2 billion CFU per serving.”
That sentence is the brand’s own, from the product page and from its product schema, and it is the weakest potency language this project has recorded anywhere. “Up to” is not a specification; it is a ceiling. A bottle delivering 200 million colony-forming units satisfies “up to 2 billion” perfectly. It is a weaker claim than at manufacture, which at least asserts a floor on one particular day.
The panel itself is more restrained — it prints “(2 Billion CFU)” with no temporal basis at all, neither at manufacture nor at expiry. So the number on the label has no date at which it is claimed to be true, and the number in the copy has a “no more than” in front of it.
Two billion is also the smallest total in the batch this was audited alongside — against 20 billion for YourBiology and 60 billion for NatureWise — and it sits inside an explicit Proprietary Probiotic Blend of 15 mg across 13 organisms, with no per-organism split.
That last point does specific damage to the brand’s own headline claim. MaryRuth leans on “Clinically studied Bacillus coagulans Unique IS-2®” — and Unique IS-2 is a real, separately studied strain with published trials. Those trials dose 2 billion CFU of Unique IS-2 alone. Here, 2 billion is the total across all thirteen organisms, so whatever fraction is Unique IS-2, it is necessarily below the trial dose. The arithmetic is certain — a part is less than the whole. The exact fraction is not disclosed and this page does not guess at it.
What is good here is genuinely good and should not be lost in the above. MaryRuth publishes a complete, legible Supplement Facts image — tri-dosed by age, every column itemised — which more than half the products this project has torn down do not do in any form. The one branded strain is named with its trademark. The organism list is complete. USDA Organic is a real federal certification scheme with a public register, unlike a self-asserted seal — it could not be machine-read in this pass, so it is recorded as brand-asserted and unverified, and nothing here says MaryRuth lacks it. And the pricing is the cleanest in its batch: one price, a plain 10% subscribe discount, no stacked fake markdowns anywhere.
Two things a man shopping a men’s probiotic should know. This is a whole-family product — the same liquid is dosed 0.75 mL for a toddler and 3 mL for an adult, and the adult serving carries 3 g of fat, all of it saturated, because it is an MCT-oil suspension. And MaryRuth sells three women’s probiotics and no men’s probiotic at all; the men’s shelf in this catalogue is multivitamins.