One product, one panel, one record.
Thorne FloraMend Prime Probiotic — label audit
Thorne's weight-management claim quotes a real trial's numbers exactly — "a nearly 5-percent average reduction in visceral and subcutaneous body fat" — from a study of Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055 delivered as 200 g/day of fermented milk. FloraMend contains L. gasseri KS-13. Same species, different strain, roughly four times the daily CFU, different format.
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
66.0 out of 100
Rank 59 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 6 other products — 7 products sit on 66.0 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 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 | 3 of 3 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 3 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 3 = 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 | 3 of 3 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. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification queried at the issuer’s register and not listed there. | 0 / 1 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
0.6600 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6600. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 66.0 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 | 5 Billion Live Cells |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 3 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
†At time of expiration.
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 gasseri | KS-13 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Lactobacillus gasseri KS-13" |
| Bifidobacterium longum | MM-2 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Bifidobacterium longum MM-2" |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | G9-1 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Bifidobacterium bifidum G9-1" AND randomized |
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 298070 (opens in a new tab) captured Entered 2023-10-24, on-market. The current record, whose blend note reads verbatim "5 billion live cells at time of expiration".
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 16125 (opens in a new tab) captured The 2012 record — the last version to publish the per-strain split, 2.5 billion / 1.25 billion / 1.25 billion.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 328844 (opens in a new tab) captured Thorne Women's Daily Probiotic, entered 2025-04-24, on-market. Four tiers with amounts, eight strains, 10 billion CFU at expiration, Chr. Hansen named.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — pureformulas-floramend-2026-07-30https://www.pureformulas.com/product/floramend-prime-probiotic-by-thorne/1000018667 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Authorised Thorne retailer reproducing the panel and the claim copy. Used as the source for the claim quotations because the thorne.com browser session was not retained.
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, 3 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
$1.87 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $56.00 USD
- What that buys
- 30-capsule bottle (30 servings, 1 capsule per serving)
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.thorne.com/products/dp/floramend-prime-probiotic — 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 Certified for Sport | Absent from register | 30 July 2026 |
| "Thorne Verified" | Not checked | not checked |
NSF Certified for Sport
The register was queried and this product is not listed on it.
Checked at the certifier's own register and confirmed absent. NSF returns 48 Thorne listings; FloraMend Prime Probiotic is not among them. What is certified at Thorne, on the probiotic and GI side, is FloraSport 20B and EnteroMend. Thorne does not itself claim FloraMend holds it — the product page shows only Thorne's own in-house "Thorne Verified" badge plus dietary attributes — but Thorne is a heavily NSF-certified brand with a sibling probiotic that does carry the real certification, which makes brand-level "Thorne is NSF certified" statements about this SKU materially misleading. Any third-party-testing claim for FloraMend specifically is brand-asserted only.
"Thorne Verified"
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Thorne's own in-house badge, not a third-party 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 Thorne Women's Daily Probiotic (SKU SF817). Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- FloraMend is $56 for 30 capsules — $1.87 a day. Women's Daily is $39 for 30 capsules — $1.30 a day. The ungendered SKU that gets sold to men costs about 44% more per day. Thorne PDPs and retailer listings, verified 2026-07-30
- FloraMend is 5 billion CFU across three organisms in one flat proprietary blend. Women's Daily is 10 billion CFU across eight organisms in four tiers with amounts: Astarte blend 5 B, Urex blend 2 B, L. plantarum UALp-05 2 B, L. acidophilus UALa-01 1 B. DSLD 298070 versus DSLD 328844
- Women's Daily names its supplier on the label — Chr. Hansen A/S, for the Astarte, Urex, GR-1, RC-14, LBV- and UA- marks. FloraMend names no supplier at all. DSLD 328844
What is identical across the pair
- Both state potency at time of expiration on the panel.
- Both are 30 capsules.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 weight-management-claim-uses-a-different-strain
Thorne's copy: "FloraMend Prime Probiotic's proprietary blend boasts the added benefit of proven weight management support. A study on the ingredients in FloraMend showed a nearly 5-percent average reduction in visceral and subcutaneous body fat with correlating positive effects on body weight, waist circumference, and BMI." That study is Kadooka 2010, and its abstract matches Thorne's sentence exactly — visceral fat down 4.6%, subcutaneous 3.3%, body weight 1.4%, BMI 1.5%, waist 1.8%. It tested Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055, delivered as 200 g/day of fermented milk at roughly 2 x 10^10 CFU/day of that one strain. FloraMend contains L. gasseri KS-13, in a capsule, at 5 x 10^9 CFU/day across three strains. Same species, different strain, different format, about four times the daily CFU. The hedge "a study on the ingredients in FloraMend" is literally defensible only if "ingredient" means the species rather than the strain — which is exactly the substitution the field's consensus exists to forbid — and the neighbouring sentence drops the hedge entirely, saying "proven".
The record: PMID 20216555 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 per-strain-split-removed-in-2014-and-never-restored
The 2012 government record published the split: L. gasseri 2,500,000,000 live cells, B. longum 1,250,000,000, B. bifidum 1,250,000,000 — 50/25/25. Every version since 2014 gives one number for three organisms. Thorne disclosed more twelve years ago than it does now.
The record: DSLD 16125 versus DSLD 298070 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 trial-regimen-differs-from-the-label-regimen
The 2015 blend trial dosed the probiotic twice daily. The 2017 trial specifies 2 capsules/day at 1.5 billion CFU per capsule — 3 billion CFU/day. FloraMend's suggested use is one capsule daily at 5 billion CFU. "Clinically studied" should not be read as "at the studied regimen".
The record: PMID 25909149 · PMID 28228426 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 neurotransmitter-and-mood-narrative-with-no-endpoint
"balanced gut flora for healthy neurotransmitter production – important for a positive mood and healthy outlook." Neither FloraMend trial measured a neurotransmitter or a mood endpoint.
The record: PureFormulas listing for Thorne FloraMend, verified 2026-07-30 — open ithttps://www.pureformulas.com/product/floramend-prime-probiotic-by-thorne/1000018667 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 5 hormone-support-tag-with-no-supporting-content
FloraMend carries the benefit-tag set "Gut Health, Hormone Support, Metabolism, Probiotics". There is no hormonal endpoint in either trial and no supporting content on the page.
The record: Retailer product URL slug independently reproducing the tag set, verified 2026-07-30
Finding 6 expiry-footnote-dropped-from-the-machine-readable-table
Thorne's on-page structured ingredient table renders the blend as a bare CFU number with no expiry footnote. The footnote survives only in the prose block and on the physical label. Anyone scraping the page — which is what price-comparison tools and AI shopping assistants do — gets an unqualified CFU number.
The record: Reported by the teardown from a live browser session; the retained capture does not reproduce it, so it is recorded as unverified
Finding 7 nsf-halo-transfer
Thorne leans hard on NSF Certified for Sport brand-wide and affiliate listicles routinely transfer that halo to FloraMend. Checked at NSF's own register: FloraMend is not certified. FloraSport 20B and EnteroMend are.
The record: nsfsport.com certified-products search, 48 Thorne listings, checked 2026-07-30 — open ithttps://www.nsfsport.com/certified-products/search-results.php?keyword=Thorne — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 8 most-expensive-per-day-for-the-fewest-organisms
$1.87 a day for three organisms and 5 billion CFU — the highest cost per day and the lowest organism count and CFU in its batch, and about 44% more per day than the same brand's women's probiotic, which has eight organisms and twice the CFU.
The record: Thorne PDPs and retailer listings, verified 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.
- "Thorne Verified" status
- Thorne's own in-house badge, not a third-party certification.
- Thorne's own machine-readable ingredient table and several on-page strings
- The retained captures of thorne.com do not contain the "5000000000cfus" table rendering, the "up to the date of expiration" prose quotation, the "Hormone Support" benefit tag, the "Weight Management Stack" membership or the $56 price. Two partial rescues: the $56 price is confirmed at three independent retailers, and a retailer URL slug independently corroborates the exact benefit-tag set "Gut Health, Hormone Support, Metabolism, Probiotics". The Hormone Support finding is therefore cited to the retailer slug rather than to a bare string match, because "Hormone Support" also appears in that retailer's site-wide navigation and is a plausible false-positive origin.
- Per-strain CFU amounts
- Not published since 2014. The 2012 record shows the split was 2.5 billion / 1.25 billion / 1.25 billion; every version since gives one number for three organisms, so a consumer today cannot know whether that ratio still holds.
- Whether FloraMend's claim quotes apply to Thorne's own current copy
- The claim quotations on this page are sourced to PureFormulas, an authorised Thorne retailer that reproduces the panel and the copy, because the thorne.com captures could not be reproduced. Note that Thorne's own site softens one of them — "individuals suffering from a seasonal allergy" on the retailer becomes "during seasonal changes" on thorne.com.
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.
Thorne quotes a real study, accurately, and the study is of a different strain.
“A study on the ingredients in FloraMend showed a nearly 5-percent average reduction in visceral and subcutaneous body fat with correlating positive effects on body weight, waist circumference, and BMI.”
Find the study and the match is exact — visceral fat down 4.6%, subcutaneous 3.3%, body weight 1.4%, BMI 1.5%, waist 1.8%. It is Kadooka 2010, and what it tested was:
| Kadooka 2010 | FloraMend | |
|---|---|---|
| Strain | L. gasseri SBT2055 | L. gasseri KS-13 |
| Format | 200 g/day fermented milk | one capsule |
| Dose | ≈2 × 10¹⁰ CFU/day of that strain alone | 5 × 10⁹ CFU/day across three strains |
Same species. Different strain. Different delivery format. Roughly four times the daily CFU of the one organism doing the work.
Thorne’s wording is carefully hedged — “a study on the ingredients in FloraMend” — which is literally defensible only if “ingredient” means the species L. gasseri rather than the strain KS-13. That is precisely the substitution the ISAPP/FAO-WHO consensus exists to forbid. And the sentence next to it drops the hedge: “proven weight management support.”
Verified, so the point is not a hunch: the complete KS-13 literature under its strict designator is two papers, both of them trials of the FloraMend blend, and neither measured body composition. There is no MM-2 or G9-1 body-composition trial either. What the blend’s two randomised trials actually measured was cytokines in the elderly and hay-fever quality of life in young adults — and the hay-fever result is genuinely the best-substantiated claim Thorne makes.
Two smaller things. Thorne’s 2012 label published the per-strain split — 2.5 billion, 1.25 billion, 1.25 billion. Every label since 2014 gives one number for three organisms. It disclosed more twelve years ago. And FloraMend is not NSF Certified for Sport: NSF’s own register lists 48 Thorne products and this is not one of them, although Thorne’s FloraSport 20B and EnteroMend are. Thorne does not claim otherwise; affiliate listicles do the transferring.
Finally, the comparison Thorne’s own catalogue invites. The women’s probiotic is $39 to FloraMend’s $56, with twice the CFU, eight organisms instead of three, a four-tier blend with amounts instead of one flat number, and its supplier named on the label. The ungendered SKU that gets sold to men costs 44% more per day and discloses less. Thorne’s actual men’s line contains no probiotic at all.