One product, one panel, one record.
NOW Foods Probiotic-10, 25 Billion — label audit
NOW is the only product in its batch with a falsifiable potency guarantee — a number bound to a date — and it silently swapped one of its ten strains. The Bifidobacterium breve went from Bb-03 to Bb-18 between the 2017 label and the current one, same product name, no notice, and the replacement has zero PubMed records of any kind.
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
69.8 out of 100
Rank 52 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 69.8 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 | 10 of 10 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 10 / 10 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| 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 "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 | 7 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. | 7 / 10 = 0.7000 | 0.1400 |
| 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 |
0.6000 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6977. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 69.8 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 CFU (Blend of 10 Strains, 160 mg) |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 10 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
This product is formulated to deliver a potency of 25 billion CFU through the Best By date.
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.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | La-14 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis (correct name: Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis) | Bl-04 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus plantarum (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | Lp-115 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus casei (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus casei) | Lc-11 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus) | Lr-32 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus paracasei) | Lpc-37 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | Bb-18 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
| Streptococcus thermophilus | St-21 | — not stated separately | Animal or in-vitro only | — |
| Lactobacillus salivarius (correct name: Ligilactobacillus salivarius) | Ls-33 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | Bl-05 | — not stated separately | No records | — |
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.
- Internet Archive capture — 20251218192433 (opens in a new tab) captured The current label, recovered via the Internet Archive because nowfoods.com returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. Source for the Bb-18 strain, the 160 mg blend, the through-expiry sentence and the manufacturer price.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 73822 (opens in a new tab) captured The 2017 label, entered 2017-05-24 and flagged off-market. Carries Bb-03 where the current label carries Bb-18, and "Keep refrigerated to maintain potency" where the current label says "cool, dry place".
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 314222 (opens in a new tab) captured NOW Women's Probiotic 20 Billion, entered 2024-07-25, on-market. The comparator.
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, 7 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
$0.67 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $19.99 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Intertek GMP Supplement Certification | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| "Strain Verified" (DNA fingerprinting) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| Kosher (Triangle K), Halal, Non-GMO, Vegan | Not checked | not checked |
| 2013 Better Nutrition Best of Supplements Award | Not checked | not checked |
Intertek GMP Supplement Certification
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
A named, real certifying body — materially stronger disclosure than the unattributed "GMP CERTIFIED" roundels elsewhere in this cohort. Not verified on Intertek's own registry.
"Strain Verified" (DNA fingerprinting)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Verbatim on the label: "The probiotic strains in this product have been identity-verified using DNA-fingerprinting technology." A genuine and unusual quality practice, and NOW is one of very few brands in this project to state it. It verifies identity, not potency or purity, and no laboratory is named and no certificate published.
Kosher (Triangle K), Halal, Non-GMO, Vegan
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Dietary and religious attributes, not product-quality certifications.
2013 Better Nutrition Best of Supplements Award
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
A thirteen-year-old trade-magazine award still displayed. Not evidence of anything.
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 NOW Women's Probiotic 20 Billion. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's product is three strains — B. animalis subsp. lactis HN019, L. acidophilus La-14 and L. rhamnosus HN001 — against Probiotic-10's ten. Only La-14 is shared. Wayback 20251218192433 versus DSLD 314222
- The women's blend is 139 mg / 20 billion CFU; Probiotic-10 is 160 mg / 25 billion. Wayback 20251218192433 versus DSLD 314222
- The women's label names a sex-specific anatomical target and the strains claimed to reach it, verbatim: "This product features L. rhamnosus HN001 and L. acidophilus La-14 which have been shown to colonize the vaginal tract and help to maintain healthy vaginal pH when taken orally." Probiotic-10's positioning is "Healthy Intestinal Flora". DSLD 314222
What is identical across the pair
- La-14 is the only strain on both panels.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 undisclosed-strain-substitution
The 2017 government label record lists Bifidobacterium breve Bb-03. The current label lists Bb-18. Same product name, same Probiotic-10 branding, same CFU count, no announcement and no reformulation notice. It is legal and common — and it means any review, listicle or PubMed cross-reference written against the 2017 label is describing a product that is not on shelves, while DSLD, the government reference database, still carries only the superseded version.
The record: DSLD 73822 versus Wayback 20251218192433 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 the-replacement-strain-has-no-literature-at-all
"Bb-18"[tiab] returns zero PubMed records — not a randomised trial, not an animal study, not an in-vitro paper. The strain NOW substituted in has no indexed literature whatsoever under that designator, and the strain it replaced had none either.
The record: PubMed query re-run 2026-07-30, confirmed exact
Finding 3 three-of-ten-strains-with-zero-human-evidence
Bb-18, St-21 and Bl-05. Because the blend is not split per strain, there is no way to know how much of the 25 billion CFU those three account for. They could be 10% of the product or 60%.
The record: PubMed queries re-run 2026-07-30
Finding 4 colonize-overstates-persistence
"NOW Probiotic-10 offers a balanced spectrum of live organisms consisting of acid-resistant probiotic bacterial strains that are known to naturally colonize the human GI tract." The field's own consensus body says the opposite, verbatim: "Probiotics typically do not take up residence in your gut and may not evoke any detectable change in the microbes that are normally present.""
The record: DSLD 73822 label statement versus the ISAPP consumer infographic, both quoted verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 detoxification-process-is-an-undefined-mechanism
"Probiotic bacteria are critical for healthy digestion, help maintain the integrity of the intestinal lining, support proper intestinal motility and participate in the detoxification process." Note also that this sentence is about probiotic bacteria in general, not about this product.
The record: Wayback 20251218192433
Finding 6 clinically-validated-immune-claim-cannot-be-dose-checked
"Probiotic-10 utilizes bacterial strains that have been clinically validated for their support of healthy immune system function." Defensible for La-14 and Bl-04 via PMID 18422632 — but that trial dosed 20 billion CFU of a single strain, and here ten strains share 25 billion with no disclosed split. The trialled dose cannot be confirmed to be present.
The record: PMID 18422632 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 7 manufacturer-site-blocks-verification
nowfoods.com returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. This is a category-level finding — the same wall appears at GNC, Seed, Garden of Life and several retailers — and its practical consequence is that the NIH DSLD and the Internet Archive are the only reliable public label sources for this category, while DSLD's copies are frequently years stale, as this product demonstrates.
The record: HTTP 403 on all three Probiotic-10 URLs, reproduced 2026-07-30
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.
- Intertek GMP Supplement Certification status
- A named, real certifying body — materially stronger disclosure than the unattributed "GMP CERTIFIED" roundels elsewhere in this cohort. Not verified on Intertek's own registry.
- "Strain Verified" (DNA fingerprinting) status
- Verbatim on the label: "The probiotic strains in this product have been identity-verified using DNA-fingerprinting technology." A genuine and unusual quality practice, and NOW is one of very few brands in this project to state it. It verifies identity, not potency or purity, and no laboratory is named and no certificate published.
- Kosher (Triangle K), Halal, Non-GMO, Vegan status
- Dietary and religious attributes, not product-quality certifications.
- 2013 Better Nutrition Best of Supplements Award status
- A thirteen-year-old trade-magazine award still displayed. Not evidence of anything.
- The retailer prices that underwrote the published 4.9x price gap
- The teardown cited Vitacost at $15.73 for 50 count and $30.61 for 100 count, giving $0.31 a day. Vitacost 301s to a redirect that could not be resolved, and the same method note records Vitacost silently redirecting to an unrelated product on another attempt in the same batch. Those two numbers are not published. The price shown on this page is the manufacturer's own archived price instead.
- The per-strain CFU split
- Not disclosed. All ten strains sit inside a single "Blend of 10 Strains" line totalling 25 billion CFU in 160 mg. The 25 billion could be overwhelmingly one cheap strain — and three of the ten have no human evidence at all, so there is no way to know how much of the product they account for.
- The Intertek GMP certification
- Named but not verified on Intertek's own registry.
- Whether the dropped refrigeration instruction reflects a genuine stability improvement
- The 2017 label said "Keep refrigerated to maintain potency"; the current label says "Store in a cool, dry place to maintain potency". Recorded as an observed label change. No stability data is available either way.
- The label itself, from the manufacturer's own site
- nowfoods.com returns HTTP 403 to automated requests on all three Probiotic-10 URLs, and iHerb also returns 403. The current label was recovered only via an Internet Archive snapshot. A consumer or a tool attempting to verify this label programmatically against the manufacturer's own site cannot do so.
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 product does the single most important thing right, and this site should say so before anything else.
“This product is formulated to deliver a potency of 25 billion CFU through the Best By date.”
A number, bound to a date. It is falsifiable. In a category where “at time of manufacture” is the norm and undefined phrases like “an effective potency” are the sophisticated version of the same evasion, that sentence is the standard everything else in this research should be held to. NOW also states that its strains are identity-verified by DNA fingerprinting, which almost nobody does, and it names its GMP certifier rather than printing an anonymous roundel.
Now the finding.
Compare the 2017 government label record with the current label and nine of the ten strains are unchanged. The tenth is not. Bifidobacterium breve Bb-03 became Bb-18. Same product name, same “Probiotic-10” branding, same 25 billion CFU, no announcement, no reformulation notice. It is legal and it is common. Two things follow.
First, every review, listicle and cross-reference written against the 2017 formula is now describing a product that is not on the shelf — and DSLD, the government reference database, still carries only the old label.
Second, the replacement is worse on evidence than the strain it replaced, which is itself remarkable
because the strain it replaced had none. "Bb-18"[tiab] returns zero PubMed records of any kind.
Not a trial. Not an animal study. Not an in-vitro paper. Together with St-21 and Bl-05, that is three
of ten strains with no human evidence at all — and because the blend is not split per strain, nobody
outside NOW knows what fraction of the 25 billion they account for.
There is one more thing this product tells you, and it has nothing to do with the bottle. NOW makes a women’s probiotic and does not make a men’s one. Read the women’s label and you can see why the women’s one exists: it names an anatomical target that exists in one sex, names two strains claimed to reach it, and those strains have a real literature — HN001 has 49 randomised-trial records, HN019 has 36. Run the same test on a hypothetical men’s version and there is no target, no strain and no literature. A manufacturer that has been building supplements since 1968, and that plainly will gender a SKU when the biology supports it, has not built this one.