One product, one panel, one record.
Metagenics UltraFlora Spectrum Probiotic — label audit
The panel prints "(30 billion CFU)††" — and the page defines none of its four footnote markers. The double dagger is the marker the industry conventionally uses to carry exactly the disclosure a buyer needs, at time of manufacture against at expiration. Metagenics printed the marker and omitted the sentence.
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 Torn down 2026-07-31, outside the frozen founding cohort of 27 and outside every D27 denominator.
- 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.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced The brand's own page could not be read live: metagenics.com returns HTTP 403 to automation, and every statement here about what that page says or does not say — the price, the claim wording, the storage line, and the finding that four footnote markers are printed and none defined — is scoped to an Internet Archive snapshot dated 2025-08-04, not to the page as it stands today. The panel itself does not depend on that: it reconciles against DSLD 295883, which is tied to the SKU on sale by its own variant data and servings count. Two smaller limits travel with it. The 60-count one-time price is unverified, because the archived page exposes $87.25 only inside a subscription option. And the GFCO gluten-free mark could not be checked at its issuer, because GFCO publishes no queryable product register at all — recorded as brand-asserted and unverified, never as absent.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
49.1 out of 100
Rank 95 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 | 6 of 7 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 6 / 7 = 0.8571 | 0.205714 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 7 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 7 = 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 | 5 of 7 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. | 5 / 7 = 0.7143 | 0.142857 |
| 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 |
0.421905 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.4906. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 49.1 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 | A Proprietary Blend of … 314.75 mg** (30 billion CFU)†† |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 7 — 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saccharomyces boulardii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | "Saccharomyces boulardii"[tw] AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis | Bi-07 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Bi-07"[tw] OR "Bi07"[tw]) AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | Lp-115 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Lp-115"[tw] OR "Lp115"[tw]) AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Lactobacillus salivarius | Ls-33 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Ls-33"[tw] OR "LS33"[tw]) AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | NCFM | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "NCFM"[tw] AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Streptococcus thermophilus | St-21 | — not stated separately | Human records, no RCT | ("ST-21"[tw] OR "ST21"[tw]) AND "Streptococcus thermophilus"[tw] |
| Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis | Bl-04 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Bl-04"[tw] OR "Bl04"[tw]) AND randomized controlled trial[pt] |
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 295883 (opens in a new tab) captured 30 vegetarian capsules, UPC 7 55571 93183 2, on market, entered 2023-08-23. Matched to the SKU on sale: the archived page exposes allVariantsSkus ["UFSP","UFSP60"] with mainProductSku "UFSP" and 30 servings per container, and this is the 30-count record. Carries the IFF trademark footnote verbatim — "Bl-07 and NCFM are registered or licensed trademarks of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. and are used under license."
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 265259 (opens in a new tab) captured The 2022 60-count record, UPC 7 55571 94107 7. Same strains; the licensor line reads "Bi-07 and NCFM are registered trademarks licensed by DuPont", which tracks the DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences to IFF corporate transfer rather than a formula change. It also carries a sentence the 2023 label drops: "Backed by the Metagenics ID Guarantee for purity, clinical reliability, and predicted safety via scientific identification of strains with established health benefits."
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 216583 (opens in a new tab) captured UltraFlora Women's, UPC 7 55571 93747 6, 30 capsules, on market — the women's comparison panel.
- Internet Archive capture — 20250804030527 (opens in a new tab) captured The brand's own product page, fetched from the Internet Archive because metagenics.com returns HTTP 403 to automation. Source of the price, the subscription ladder, the claim copy, the storage line and the four undefined footnote markers. Every statement about what the brand's page does or does not say is scoped to this snapshot.
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, 5 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
$1.71 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $51.25 USD
- What that buys
- 30 vegetarian capsules (30 servings, 1 capsule daily), SKU UFSP
- 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Certified Gluten Free (GFCO.ORG) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Science-backed & third-party tested" | Not checked | not checked |
Certified Gluten Free (GFCO.ORG)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Printed on both label generations, per the Seals/Symbols field of DSLD 295883 and 265259. GFCO publishes no queryable certified-product register: gfco.org is reachable at HTTP 200 but exposes only Apply, News, About and Contact, and its ?s= search is a content search over blog posts rather than a product lookup. Brand-asserted and unverified — explicitly not a finding that Metagenics lacks the certification. Scope trap: a gluten-free certification certifies the absence of gluten and says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry or contaminants. This product carries no NSF contents certification, no USP verification and no Informed Choice mark.
"Science-backed & third-party tested"
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Names no issuer, no scope, no laboratory and no analyte. There is no register to check because none is identified. An unfalsifiable phrase rather than a certification.
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 UltraFlora Women's. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's SKU is a purpose-built two-strain formula on Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 and Lactobacillus reuteri RC-14 — the most-published urogenital probiotic pair in existence — against Spectrum's seven-organism GI and immune blend. Metagenics demonstrably knows how to build a sex-specific probiotic around sex-specific evidence, and has done so for women and not for men. DSLD 295883 versus DSLD 216583
- Blend weight is 314.75 mg on Spectrum against 14.5 mg on the women's SKU, for two entirely different formulation intents. DSLD 295883 versus DSLD 216583
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 proprietary-blend-with-no-per-organism-cfu
314.75 mg and 30 billion CFU lumped across seven organisms with no split of either figure. This is what neutralises the strain disclosure: a trial is "strain X at dose Y for outcome Z", and this label supplies X without Y.
The record: DSLD 295883 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 four-footnote-markers-and-not-one-definition
The panel prints † on "Serving Size 1 Capsule†", ** on "314.75 mg**", †† on "(30 billion CFU)††" and ††† on "Bi-07†††" and "NCFM†††". None is defined on the page. The raw archived HTML was searched — including the JSON-embedded, unicode-escaped copy of the same table — for every dagger run and for the strings manufactur, expiration, expiry and time of; the only expir hit anywhere in the document is an unrelated UI dictionary key. The †† on the CFU number is where at-manufacture or at-expiry belongs, and there is no footnote text at all. ††† is defined only in the government transcription, as the IFF trademark line.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, full HTML search, against DSLD 295883, both 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 the-yeast-has-no-designator
S. boulardii is the one organism on this panel whose evidence most depends on strain identity — about 94 percent of the species' 119-RCT literature sits under a single strain, CNCM I-745 — and it is the one left unnamed.
The record: PubMed E-utilities, "Saccharomyces boulardii"[tw] AND randomized controlled trial[pt] = 119 against "CNCM I-745"[tw] = 112, run 2026-07-31
Finding 4 st-21-has-zero-human-rcts
Zero under two independent spellings, and the bare designator's 319 hits are all false positives from unrelated gene and clone names. It is nonetheless counted inside "seven clinically researched probiotic strains".
The record: PubMed E-utilities, three query forms, run 2026-07-31
Finding 5 number-one-doctor-recommended-is-unsubstantiated-on-the-page
"Metagenics is #1 Doctor Recommended Professional Supplement Brand" carries no footnote, no survey, no measurement period and no data source anywhere in the archived page.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, read 2026-07-31
Finding 6 third-party-tested-names-no-third-party
"Science-backed & third-party tested" identifies no issuer, no scope, no laboratory and no analyte — unverifiable by construction rather than merely unverified.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, read 2026-07-31
Finding 7 release-kinetics-claim-with-no-method
"Starts to release good bacteria into the gut in 30 min to provide 24-hour gut support" is a pharmacokinetic claim, not a structure/function one — it asserts a measurable disintegration and persistence profile. No citation, no study reference and no test method appears anywhere on the page.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, read 2026-07-31
Finding 8 practitioner-exclusive-on-a-direct-to-consumer-product
The federal record's precaution field reads "Practitioner Exclusive" on a product sold direct-to-consumer from the same site, with a 30%-off first-order coupon code on the page.
The record: DSLD 295883 precaution field against the archived product page — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 ambiguous-storage-instruction
"For best results, store in a cool dry place or keep refrigerated." The "or" leaves the buyer to choose, with no statement of which condition the 30 billion is guaranteed under — on a label that does not state a potency basis at all.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, read 2026-07-31
Finding 10 clinically-studied-ingredients-ensure-efficacy
"Purity and Quality - Clinically studied ingredients ensure quality, purity, and efficacy" asserts the efficacy of this product from studies of its ingredients, at doses the label does not disclose.
The record: Archived product page 20250804030527, read 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.
- Certified Gluten Free (GFCO.ORG) status
- Printed on both label generations, per the Seals/Symbols field of DSLD 295883 and 265259. GFCO publishes no queryable certified-product register: gfco.org is reachable at HTTP 200 but exposes only Apply, News, About and Contact, and its ?s= search is a content search over blog posts rather than a product lookup. Brand-asserted and unverified — explicitly not a finding that Metagenics lacks the certification. Scope trap: a gluten-free certification certifies the absence of gluten and says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry or contaminants. This product carries no NSF contents certification, no USP verification and no Informed Choice mark.
- "Science-backed & third-party tested" status
- Names no issuer, no scope, no laboratory and no analyte. There is no register to check because none is identified. An unfalsifiable phrase rather than a certification.
- The live brand page
- metagenics.com returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching. Everything on this page sourced to the brand's own copy — the price, the claim wording, the four undefined footnote markers, the storage line — was read from an Internet Archive snapshot dated 2025-08-04, and is scoped to that snapshot rather than to the page as it stands today. The panel itself is independently reconciled against the federal record.
- The GFCO gluten-free certification at its issuer
- GFCO holds no public product register. Its site search returns blog posts, not certified products. Recorded as brand-asserted and unverified, which is a statement about the register and not a finding against Metagenics.
- The one-time price of the 60-count SKU
- The archived page exposes $87.25 for SKU UFSP60 only inside a subscription option object (every 2 months, 1 unit). The one-time price is not in the snapshot.
- Whether this product delivers any of its strains at a trialled dose
- Unanswerable. Every one of the 35, 18 and 17 trials behind NCFM, Bi-07 and Bl-04 was run at a stated dose. The blend is proprietary, no per-organism CFU is given for any of the seven, and 30 billion is lumped across all of them — so S. boulardii could be 15 billion of that total or 15 million. Naming the strain without naming the dose gets most of the way to substantiation and then stops.
- The design of the three records that survive scoping for St-21
- They were not opened. What is established is that the RCT-filtered count is zero under two independent spellings.
- The substantiation for "#1 Doctor Recommended Professional Supplement Brand"
- No footnote, no survey, no measurement period and no data source appears anywhere in the archived 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.
The most telling thing on this label is a footnote that does not exist.
The panel prints (30 billion CFU)††. The double dagger is the marker this industry conventionally
uses to carry the one disclosure a buyer actually needs — at time of manufacture against at
expiration. Search the archived page for its definition and there is nothing there. Search it for the
strings manufactur, expiration, expiry and time of, including inside the JSON-embedded copy of
the same table, and the only expir hit in the whole document is an unrelated interface dictionary key.
It is not one orphaned marker either. The page prints four — † on the serving size, ** on the
blend weight, †† on the CFU figure, ††† on two of the strain names — and defines none of them.
The last one survives only in the government transcription, where it turns out to be the IFF trademark
line.
That matters more here than it would elsewhere, because the strain disclosure is genuinely good. Six of seven organisms carry a real designator — NCFM (35 RCTs), Bi-07 (18), Bl-04 (17), Ls-33 (5), Lp-115 (1) — and NCFM paired with Bi-07, the combination the marketing leads with, has 16 randomised trials as a pair. This is materially better than a species-only panel and deserves saying.
Then two things cancel most of it.
The first is the dose. Every one of those trials ran at a stated dose. This is a 314.75 mg proprietary blend with 30 billion CFU lumped across seven organisms and no per-organism figure for any of them. A trial is “strain X at dose Y for outcome Z”; this label gives you X and withholds Y, so none of the trials can be checked against the product.
The second is the yeast. Saccharomyces boulardii is the one organism here with no designator at all — and it is precisely the organism where that matters most, because roughly 94 percent of the species’ 119-trial literature sits under a single strain, CNCM I-745. A buyer cannot tell whether they are getting the strain with 112 papers behind it or an unstudied one.
Two more, briefly. St-21 returns zero human RCTs under two independent spellings, and is still counted inside “seven clinically researched probiotic strains”. And “Starts to release good bacteria into the gut in 30 min to provide 24-hour gut support” is a release-kinetics claim — a measurable disintegration and persistence profile — with no citation, no study and no test method anywhere on the page.
At $1.71 a day this is the most expensive product in its batch, for the fewest organisms. Metagenics also sells UltraFlora Women’s: a purpose-built two-strain formula on GR-1 and RC-14, the most-published urogenital pair there is. There is no men’s SKU. The brand knows how to build a probiotic around sex-specific evidence; it has done it once, and not for men.