One product, one panel, one record.
Physician's Choice Men's Probiotic — 70 Billion CFU, 8 Strains — label audit
One capsule delivers 200 mcg of selenium — 364% of the Daily Value, and exactly the daily dose used in SELECT, the 35,533-man prostate-cancer prevention trial that found no benefit and whose case-cohort follow-up found a 91% increase in high-grade prostate cancer among selenium-replete men. Nothing on the product page mentions any of it.
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
8.5 out of 100
Rank 147 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 4 other products — 5 products sit on 8.5 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 | 0 of 8 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 8 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 8 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 8 = 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 | 0 of 8 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. | 0 / 8 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 |
0.073333 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.0853. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 8.5 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 | 70 Billion CFUs (stated as "Total Probiotic Activity") |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 8 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Marketed to men |
Total Probiotic Activity 70 Billion CFUs — printed with no temporal qualifier of any kind, neither "at manufacture" nor "at expiry".
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
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.
The panel names species only, with no strain designator anywhere. A species name is not a claim: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species can contain thousands.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactiplantibacillus plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bacillus coagulans | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lacticaseibacillus paracasei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Limosilactobacillus reuteri | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis (correct name: Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium 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 — MEN-30CT-CAROUSEL_6_3.2.0https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2677/6462/files/MEN-30CT-CAROUSEL_6_3.2.0.jpg — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own Supplement Facts carousel image, downloaded and transcribed directly, then independently re-read during the audit pass. The panel is not present as text anywhere in the page HTML.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — physicianschoice-mens-pdp-2026-07-30https://physicianschoice.com/products/physicians-choice-probiotics-for-men-70-billion-cfu-8-strains — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Live page, HTTP 200. Price, SKU MEN-30CT-AMZ, claims and review block.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 323205 (opens in a new tab) captured Women's comparator, entered 2024-12-21, on-market. There is no men's record.
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, 0 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
$1.11 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $33.30 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule per serving)
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://physicianschoice.com/products/physicians-choice-probiotics-for-men-70-billion-cfu-8-strains — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| NSF cGMP (facility) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| GFSI / FSSC 22000 | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| Non-GMO Project Verified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| Eurofins / Light Labs testing | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
NSF cGMP (facility)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Read the brand's own wording carefully. The quality page lists certifications its manufacturing partners "may include", NSF cGMP among them. It does not assert that the facility making this product holds it. nsf.org returns 403 to automated requests, so nothing could be checked at the issuer. And the scope matters even if it is held: NSF cGMP certifies a facility's manufacturing process, not a product's contents. It is not NSF Certified for Sport and not a contents certification.
GFSI / FSSC 22000
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Claimed on the brand's quality page. Not checked at the issuer.
Non-GMO Project Verified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Stated by the brand for "select products". Whether this SKU is among them is not stated, and the certifier's register was unreachable.
Eurofins / Light Labs testing
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Naming its labs is genuinely more disclosure than either Garden of Life SKU offers, and it should be credited. But the page's wording is "We work with independent laboratories, including Eurofins and Light Labs" — it does not state that this SKU was tested by them, and no certificate of analysis is published.
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 Physician's Choice Women's Probiotic. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- Men's adds selenium 200 mcg (364% DV) and Hawthorne Berry 25 mg. Women's adds D-Mannose 60 mg and Pro Cran d'Or cranberry 50 mg. Brand carousel panel image versus DSLD 323205
- Men's 70 billion CFU across 8 organisms in 202 mg; women's 50 billion across 6 in 133 mg. Brand carousel panel image versus DSLD 323205
- Men's prebiotic blend 50 mg; women's 100 mg. Brand carousel panel image versus DSLD 323205
What is identical across the pair
- Neither label states a CFU basis, which confirms this is brand-wide practice rather than a one-SKU omission.
- Neither panel carries a strain designator for any organism.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 selenium-200mcg-in-a-mens-product
One capsule delivers 200 mcg of selenium, 364% of the Daily Value and about 3.6 times the 55 mcg RDA, daily and indefinitely, in a product whose entire marketing premise is that it is for men. That is exactly the dose used in SELECT — 35,533 men, four arms, double-blind, median follow-up 5.46 years — which found prostate-cancer HR 1.04 (99% CI 0.87–1.24) and concluded that selenium "did not prevent prostate cancer in this population of relatively healthy men". Its case-cohort follow-up found a 91% increase in high-grade prostate cancer (P = .007) among men with higher baseline selenium status, and concluded: "Men should avoid selenium or vitamin E supplementation at doses that exceed recommended dietary intakes." The tolerable upper intake level is 400 mcg/day, so one capsule uses half of it before food. Nothing on the product page discloses any of this; the selenium is framed purely as antioxidant and colon support.
The record: PMID 19066370 · PMID 24563519 · NCT00006392 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 cfu-basis-unstated
"Total Probiotic Activity 70 Billion CFUs" is printed with no temporal qualifier at all. The brand's dedicated quality page describes probiotic enumeration testing against "established CFU count specifications" but states no shelf-life basis and no at-expiry guarantee. In a set where nine of 27 products guarantee potency through expiry, a 70 billion headline anchored to nothing is doing comparative work it has not earned.
The record: Brand carousel panel image · physicianschoice.com/pages/quality-standards-and-testing — open ithttps://physicianschoice.com/pages/quality-standards-and-testing — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 3 hawthorn-at-one-thirty-sixth-of-trial-dose
25 mg of unstandardised "Hawthorne Berry". Hawthorn's cardiovascular evidence is built on standardised extracts at 900 and 1800 mg/day (PMID 12040357, n=209, NYHA III, with the effect appearing at 1800 mg). This is 1/36 to 1/72 of the studied dose, of a different preparation.
The record: PMID 12040357 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 de-facto-proprietary-blend
Technically a "Probiotic Blend 202 mg" with eight organisms named — but one aggregate 70 billion CFU figure and no per-organism allocation delivers exactly the opacity of a proprietary blend. The 70 billion could be 69 billion of the cheapest organism.
The record: Brand carousel panel image
Finding 5 developed-with-doctors-none-named
"Developed with Doctors◊" with no doctor named, no credentials and no disclosure of employment or payment. The on-page expert panel for a men's product is Dr. Jennifer Roelands MD (board-certified OB/GYN), Angela Pifer (functional-medicine nutritionist) and Dr. Mona Fahoum ND — no urologist, no gastroenterologist, no men's-health specialist.
The record: physicianschoice.com product page, verified live 2026-07-30 — open ithttps://physicianschoice.com/products/physicians-choice-probiotics-for-men-70-billion-cfu-8-strains — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 6 brand-expert-conflates-strain-and-species
The brand's own expert copy, on the page selling a species-only product, reads: "look for one that contains a diverse array of well-researched probiotic strains, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species." It also asserts an uncited universal threshold: "The potency, or colony-forming units (CFUs), should be at least 10 billion CFUs per serving.""
The record: physicianschoice.com product page, verified live 2026-07-30
Finding 7 spam-review-in-a-six-review-average
The product carries 6 reviews at a 5.0 average. The most recent 5-star entry, still live and still counted in that average as of 30 July 2026, is an advert for a herbal herpes/HSV cure with a gmail contact address.
The record: physicianschoice.com product page JSON-LD (reviewCount 6, ratingValue 5.0), verified live 2026-07-30
Finding 8 panel-exists-only-as-an-image
The strings "202 mg", "70 Billion CFUs" and the label's own typo "esablished" all return zero matches in the page source. The Supplement Facts panel exists only inside a product-carousel JPEG — unreadable to a screen reader, a price-comparison tool or an interaction checker.
The record: physicianschoice.com page source, verified live 2026-07-30
Finding 9 typo-on-the-brands-own-panel
The Supplement Facts image reads "Daily Value (DV) not esablished". The typo is on the brand's own artwork.
The record: Brand carousel panel image
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.
- NSF cGMP (facility) status
- Read the brand's own wording carefully. The quality page lists certifications its manufacturing partners "may include", NSF cGMP among them. It does not assert that the facility making this product holds it. nsf.org returns 403 to automated requests, so nothing could be checked at the issuer. And the scope matters even if it is held: NSF cGMP certifies a facility's manufacturing process, not a product's contents. It is not NSF Certified for Sport and not a contents certification.
- GFSI / FSSC 22000 status
- Claimed on the brand's quality page. Not checked at the issuer.
- Non-GMO Project Verified status
- Stated by the brand for "select products". Whether this SKU is among them is not stated, and the certifier's register was unreachable.
- Eurofins / Light Labs testing status
- Naming its labs is genuinely more disclosure than either Garden of Life SKU offers, and it should be credited. But the page's wording is "We work with independent laboratories, including Eurofins and Light Labs" — it does not state that this SKU was tested by them, and no certificate of analysis is published.
- Any government label record for the men's SKU
- There is none. Physician's Choice files a DSLD record for the women's probiotic (323205) and not for the men's. Every men's panel number on this page rests on the brand's own carousel JPEG, which was downloaded and read directly, and independently re-read during the audit. There is no government-transcribed corroboration.
- Whether NSF cGMP applies to the facility making this SKU
- The brand's own wording is conditional ("may include"), and nsf.org refuses automated queries.
- The conclusions of the Cochrane selenium review (PMID 29376219)
- The record's identity was verified; its results section was not read. No directional conclusion is attributed to it anywhere on this site.
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.
Lead with the selenium, because the dose match is exact and because the trial behind it is the largest in this file. It is not the cohort’s only safety-relevant finding — the undisclosed liquorice dose on Ancient Nutrition, the adverse events reframed as “die-off” on Just Thrive, the twice-changed allergen profile on Nature’s Bounty and the lactose in a product sold for bloating on Nature Target all carry one too. What is unusual here is the precision: a named trial, a named endpoint, and a dose on this label that matches the trial arm exactly.
One capsule of this product contains 200 mcg of selenium. SELECT — the definitive prostate-cancer prevention trial, 35,533 men, NCI-funded, no industry money — used 200 µg/day of L-selenomethionine. It found nothing: prostate-cancer hazard ratio 1.04, 99% CI 0.87 to 1.24. The case-cohort analysis published four years later found something worse: among men whose baseline selenium was already in the top 40%, supplementation was associated with a 91% increase in high-grade prostate cancer (P = .007). The trialists’ own conclusion sentence is quotable and this site quotes it: “Men should avoid selenium or vitamin E supplementation at doses that exceed recommended dietary intakes.”
Most American men are already selenium-replete. That is the stratum where the signal was found. This product is sold to men, taken daily, indefinitely, and its page frames the selenium as an antioxidant that helps with free radicals.
Two things this page will not do. It will not say the product causes cancer — it does not say that, and the 91% figure is a subgroup analysis, hypothesis-generating rather than definitive. And it will not present the men’s panel as government-verified: unlike the women’s SKU, there is no NIH label record for this product, so every number here comes from a JPEG the brand published.
What the brand does better than its competitors: it names its labs. Eurofins and Light Labs are more disclosure than either Garden of Life SKU offers. It also uses current post-2020 genus names for three of eight organisms, where Garden of Life’s labels are entirely pre-2020. Neither of those is nothing. Neither of them tells you how many organisms are alive in the capsule on the day you swallow it, because this label never says what its 70 billion is measured against.