One product, one panel, one record.
VSL#3® Powder / Probiotic Packets (450 Billion CFU, 30 packets) — label audit
At the top dose its own insert prints — four to eight packets a day for active flaring ulcerative colitis — this product costs $30.12 a day, roughly $916 a month, and a box lasts under four days. The page shows $112.95 and a dosing sentence. No cost per day appears anywhere, at any indication.
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, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator this site publishes and changes none of them.
- 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 check this audit runs before it prints a panel — matching the government record's UPC to the barcode on the box now being sold — failed here. The live barcode is 860009487321, and the brand's own insert agrees with it; the government record carries 7 45749 01780 2, the earlier prefix from the earlier manufacturer. Anything drawn from that record is prior-generation packaging, not the panel in today's box, and where the insert and the record disagree the insert governs. Also not quotable from this page: any formulation-level efficacy conclusion. A federal injunction bars this product's sellers from citing clinical studies performed on the pre-2016 formulation as applicable to it, and the one study the brand cites by name never states which formulation it used. Kosher and halal status are likewise not quotable — the halal certifier is not named anywhere, and Star-K's register returns identical responses to different queries, so the search of it cannot be shown to be exhaustive.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
36.0 out of 100
Rank 109 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 36.0 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 | 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 "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 | 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 | 1 claimed certification found on the issuer’s own public register. Read the scope before reading the mark: most certify one narrow property. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.1400 |
0.3600 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.3600. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 36.0 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 | 450 billion CFU per packet — the insert's wording is "at least" |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 8 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
The government record for this dosage form carries the statement verbatim: "If stored under refrigeration, the product is guaranteed through 'Best if used by' date." The Product Information Sheet, read from the rendered image, says the same for all three dosage forms: "VSL#3® products if unopened and stored under refrigeration (36-46°F or 2-8°C), are guaranteed through the 'Best if used by' date." Page copy: "Unlike many probiotics that only promise potency at the time of manufacture, VSL#3® guarantees potency through expiration when stored as directed." Storage: refrigerate at 36-46°F, stable at room temperature up to two weeks, may be frozen but must not be refrozen after thawing.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streptococcus thermophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium breve | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis (previously classified as B. longum) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium lactis (previously classified as B. infantis) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus plantarum (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus paracasei (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus paracasei) | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus helveticus (previously classified as L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus) | — 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.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — vsl3-product-information-sheet-2026-07-31https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0222/7614/5232/files/ProductInsert.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's Product Information Sheet, which covers all three dosage forms and is the only complete label this product has. 3,437,587 bytes, one page, zero extractable characters to both pypdf and pdfminer.six; read by rendering at 1717x3400 px. Source for the through-expiry guarantee, the "at least" wording, Table 1 "Adult Recommended Daily Intake" from which every cost-per-day figure on this page is computed, and the "How Supplied" UPC table, which matches this SKU's live barcode 860009487321.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — vsl3-probiotic-packets-2026-07-31https://www.vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The live product page, HTTP 200 to a plain automated fetch, on-site title "VSL#3® Powder", plus products.json. Source for the price ladder, the strain list as printed, the dosing sentence ("1-2 packets up to four times daily", which does agree with the insert's low end), the added pouchitis indication, and the reduced excipient list — cornstarch and silicon dioxide only, with no capsule shell, no magnesium stearate, no stearic acid and no microcrystalline cellulose.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 315338 (opens in a new tab) captured Government label record, "VSL#3 Unflavored", brand "Alfasigma USA", on-market, UPC 7 45749 01780 2. Recorded as prior-generation packaging: the UPC does not match the live storefront barcode 860009487321, so the cross-check this audit normally requires FAILED. This record does carry the through-expiry statement verbatim, which the sibling capsules record does not.
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
$3.77 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $112.95 USD
- What that buys
- 30-packet box at $3.765 per packet, 450 billion CFU per packet
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| FODMAP Friendly Certified | Confirmed at issuer | 31 July 2026 |
| Kosher (Star-K, per the government label record) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Halal Certified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Produced under GMP-certified conditions" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Third-party contaminant or potency laboratory | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
FODMAP Friendly Certified
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
Verified at the issuer's own certified-product listing, and this SKU is listed individually as "VSL#3 450B Unflavoured Powder Packets" alongside "VSL#3 112.5B Capsules", "VSL#3 900B Double Strength Powder Packets" and "VSL4 Gut Capsules". A genuine issuer-side confirmation of a dietary attribute — it says nothing about potency, identity or contaminants.
Kosher (Star-K, per the government label record)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Star-K's product and company listings were searched with no VSL, Alfasigma or Actial entry found — but the register ignores search parameters server-side, returning identical byte counts for different queries, and the company page is JavaScript-driven, so the listing cannot be shown to be exhaustive. Brand-asserted and unverified, not "does not hold it".
Halal Certified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The certifier is named nowhere — not on the site, not on the insert, not in the government label record — so there is no register to query. Unverifiable by construction.
"Produced under GMP-certified conditions"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
No certifying body is named, so there is no issuer at which to check it.
Third-party contaminant or potency laboratory
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
None is named, so none could be checked. No laboratory, no certificate of analysis, no heavy-metal panel and no identity-testing statement appears anywhere on the site or in the insert — on a refrigerated medical food selling at $112.95 a box.
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 VSL4® Vaginal Health (sold by the same company on the same website). Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- Five of five organisms carry full designators on the women's product — L. plantarum ROSELLA, L. rhamnosus Rosell-11, B. bifidum HA-132, L. crispatus Rosell-470 and L. gasseri HA-275 — against zero of eight here. vsl3.com/products/vsl4-vaginal-health panel versus vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets, both fetched 2026-07-31
- The women's product names its licensor and the deposit behind its lead organism: "L. plantarum ROSELLA is L. plantarum P17630 (Proge P17630®), licensed from PROGE FARM®, Italy." No equivalent statement exists on this product. vsl4-vaginal-health panel footnote, 2026-07-31
- Different regulatory classes and different shelf conditions — a refrigerated medical food at $112.95 for 30 packets here, a shelf-stable dietary supplement at $28.97 for 30 capsules there. vsl3.com/products.json?limit=250, full 5-product catalogue, 2026-07-31
What is identical across the pair
- Both are sold by the same company, on the same website, under the same brand family.
- Both print a total CFU figure and neither prints a per-organism allocation.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 thirty-dollars-a-day-at-the-top-labeled-indication-and-it-is-never-surfaced
The insert's Table 1 lists active flaring ulcerative colitis at four to eight packets a day. At this SKU's own price that is $15.06 to $30.12 a day — roughly $916 a month at the top — and a box lasts 3.8 to 7.5 days. Pouchitis is $7.53 to $15.06. IBS and UC maintenance are $3.77 to $7.53. The page shows $112.95 and a dosing sentence, and states no cost per day at any indication. Context matters and should be given fairly: this is a medical food for a serious disease taken under physician supervision, and the site flags HSA and FSA eligibility. But the number is real, it comes from the brand's own dosing table and the brand's own price, and it is nowhere presented to the shopper.
The record: $112.95 for 30 packets (vsl3.com, 2026-07-31) against Table 1 of the brand's Product Information Sheet, read from the rendered image — open ithttps://www.vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 the-complete-label-yields-zero-extractable-characters
The Product Information Sheet that covers this dosage form is 3,437,587 bytes, one page, and contains no text. Two independent parsers agree: pypdf reports fonts None, a zero-byte content stream, zero /Font objects and zero /Image objects; pdfminer.six extract_text() returns nothing but a form feed. The dosing table this page's cost figures come from, the potency guarantee, the allergen list and the UPC table exist only as artwork. A screen reader cannot read any of it. The competing eight-species medical food publishes a 12-page insert with 39,402 extractable characters.
The record: cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0222/7614/5232/files/ProductInsert.pdf, parsed with pypdf and pdfminer.six on 2026-07-31, both returning zero characters — open ithttps://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0222/7614/5232/files/ProductInsert.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 3 zero-strain-designators-across-eight-organisms
No DSM, ATCC, CNCM, NCIMB or CECT designator appears anywhere — not on the page, not on the insert, not in any government record — and no per-organism CFU is given either: one aggregate 450 billion across eight organisms. The same company, on the same website, publishes five of five designators plus the licensor on VSL4 Vaginal Health. The capability exists and is not applied here.
The record: vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets strain list against the VSL4 Vaginal Health panel on the same site, plus DSLD 315338 — open ithttps://www.vsl3.com/products/vsl4-vaginal-health — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 4 the-headline-clinical-citation-does-not-support-what-it-is-cited-for
The same claim runs on this page as on the capsules page: "In a 2021 clinical study, VSL#3® showed outcomes comparable to those achieved with a low FODMAP diet", footnoted to "Ankerson L, et al." — a misspelling of Ankersen DV. The trial was open-label with registry masking "NONE" and no placebo, its comparator was a diet, enrolment was estimated at 124 against 34 IBS patients actually enrolled with the reported comparison resting on 21, and its authors write "Although this study was underpowered, findings from this study warrant further research in a larger sample." The result was an IBS-SSS reduction of -130.00 against -126.50 at P > .99 — a non-significant difference in an underpowered open-label crossover, which is an absence of evidence rather than equivalence. Which VSL#3 the sachets were is not stated anywhere. The dose, at least, matches this dosage form: 900 billion CFU a day is two of these packets, at $7.53 a day.
The record: PMID 34904950 (J Med Internet Res 2021;23(12):e30291) and ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03586622, retrieved 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 ninety-three-percent-of-gastroenterologists-rests-on-a-2002-survey-marked-data-on-file
"In a 2002 survey of gastroenterologists, 93% reported that IBS patients were satisfied with VSL#3.¹" — footnote 1 reads "Data on file". Twenty-four years old, unpublished, unverifiable, and necessarily concerning the pre-2016 product. The companion claim, "The #1 gastroenterologist-recommended multi-strain probiotics brand", footnotes to "ProVoice® Surveys" with no date, sample or methodology.
The record: vsl3.com product-page body copy and footnotes, fetched 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 6 a-federal-injunction-governs-what-this-brand-may-claim-and-the-page-does-not-mention-it
Verified at the issuing court's own published opinion — De Simone; ExeGi Pharma, LLC v. VSL Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Alfasigma USA, Inc., Nos. 20-1846 and 20-1869, Fourth Circuit, decided 2022-06-07, published, affirmed. A jury found Leadiant and Alfasigma liable for false advertising under the Lanham Act ($15 million to ExeGi) and VSL liable for breaching its licence with De Simone ($967,435). The permanent injunction quoted in the opinion bars them from suggesting that the present Italian-produced VSL#3 "continues to contain the same formulation found in the versions of VSL#3 produced before January 31, 2016" and from "citing to or referring to any clinical studies performed on the De Simone Formulation or earlier versions of VSL#3 as relevant or applicable to Italian VSL#3." The practical consequence: the roughly 410 PubMed records indexed under "VSL#3" are not transferable to the product sold under that name today. None of this is disclosed to consumers on the product page.
The record: US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, No. 20-1846, published opinion, 29 pages, text extracted 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201846.P.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 7 the-current-seller-of-record-is-not-the-company-most-sources-name
The site's Terms of Service state verbatim that "The Site is owned and operated by Actial Nutrition, Inc.", and the Product Information Sheet reads "Manufactured for Actial Nutrition, Inc. Lafayette, CO 80026 ©2023." Alfasigma is not the current US seller. The storefront's Shopify handle is still alfasigmausa.myshopify.com.
The record: vsl3.com/policies/terms-of-service and the Product Information Sheet, both read 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.vsl3.com/policies/terms-of-service — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 8 the-dietary-supplement-disclaimer-sits-on-a-medical-food-page
Naming IBS, ulcerative colitis and pouchitis is legal and appropriate for a medical food — the category exists under the Orphan Drug Act precisely for the dietary management of a named disease, and this product should not be reported for making illegal disease claims. What is incoherent is the footer: the dietary-supplement disclaimer, "not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease", sits under a page that says the product is formulated for the dietary management of ulcerative colitis. Both regulatory postures are being run at once. The government record adds a third oddity: it carries the FDA Statement of Identity "Probiotic Medical Food" while sitting inside the Dietary Supplement Label Database.
The record: vsl3.com/products/probiotic-packets footer against its own indication copy, plus the FDA Statement of Identity field in DSLD 315338 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 no-mens-outcome-evidence-and-no-mens-product-in-a-five-product-catalogue
The complete VSL catalogue is five products — VSL#3 Capsules, VSL#3 Powder, VSL#3 DS Powder, VSL4 Gut Capsules and VSL4 Vaginal Health. Exactly one is sex-targeted and it is the women's one. No men's claim, no men's SKU, no male-specific ingredient. The query VSL#3 AND (men[Title] OR male[Title] OR mens[Title]) returns three records and all three are animal — mouse bone loss, rat neurotoxicity, mouse cognition.
The record: vsl3.com/products.json?limit=250 (5 products, all enumerated) plus PubMed E-utilities, 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.
- Kosher (Star-K, per the government label record) status
- Star-K's product and company listings were searched with no VSL, Alfasigma or Actial entry found — but the register ignores search parameters server-side, returning identical byte counts for different queries, and the company page is JavaScript-driven, so the listing cannot be shown to be exhaustive. Brand-asserted and unverified, not "does not hold it".
- Halal Certified status
- The certifier is named nowhere — not on the site, not on the insert, not in the government label record — so there is no register to query. Unverifiable by construction.
- "Produced under GMP-certified conditions" status
- No certifying body is named, so there is no issuer at which to check it.
- Third-party contaminant or potency laboratory status
- None is named, so none could be checked. No laboratory, no certificate of analysis, no heavy-metal panel and no identity-testing statement appears anywhere on the site or in the insert — on a refrigerated medical food selling at $112.95 a box.
- Whether the government label record describes the product now on sale
- It does not appear to. The live storefront barcode is 860009487321 and the insert's "How Supplied" table agrees with it exactly (VSL#3 Unflavored, 30 packets, UPC 860009487321), but DSLD 315338 carries UPC 7 45749 01780 2 — the earlier GS1 prefix from the earlier manufacturer. The UPC cross-check failed, so anything taken from that record is prior-generation packaging rather than the panel in today's box.
- Which VSL#3 formulation was used in the one clinical study the brand cites by name
- Not stated in the paper, the abstract or the trial registry. Ankersen 2021 (PMID 34904950, NCT03586622) is a single-centre Danish trial that began 2018-09-23, after the January 2016 formulation change, with Ferring Pharmaceuticals as a listed industry collaborator, and no manufacturer or origin for the sachets is recorded anywhere. Material, and nothing is asserted either way. Note that this trial dosed sachets at 900 billion CFU a day, which is this SKU's form at two packets daily.
- The Star-K kosher certification and the halal certification
- Star-K's register returns identical responses to different queries, so the search of it cannot be shown to be exhaustive; and the halal certifier is not named anywhere, so there is nothing to look up at all. Both are recorded as brand-asserted and unverified rather than as absent.
- A machine-readable version of the product's own label
- There is none. The Product Information Sheet that covers this dosage form is 3,437,587 bytes, one page, and yields zero extractable characters — pypdf reports fonts None with a zero-byte content stream, and pdfminer.six returns a single form feed. It was read by rendering it at 1717x3400 px.
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 is the same product as the capsules in a different shape: same eight species, same absent designators, same through-expiry guarantee, same single insert covering both. Two things are worth a separate page, and one of them is the largest number in the audit.
Cost. Run the brand’s own price through the brand’s own dosing table and this is what comes out:
- Irritable bowel syndrome, 1–2 packets — $3.77 to $7.53 a day, box lasts 15 to 30 days
- Ulcerative colitis maintenance, 1–2 packets — $3.77 to $7.53 a day
- Pouchitis, 2–4 packets — $7.53 to $15.06 a day, box lasts 7.5 to 15 days
- Active flaring ulcerative colitis, 4–8 packets — $15.06 to $30.12 a day, box lasts under four days
Thirty dollars a day is roughly $916 a month. Nothing else in this audit comes within an order of magnitude. Say the fair thing alongside it: this is a medical food for a serious disease, taken under physician supervision, and the site does flag HSA and FSA eligibility. But every figure above is the brand’s own price divided by the brand’s own table, and not one of them appears anywhere on the page. The shopper sees $112.95 and a sentence about dosing.
The thing this SKU gets right that its sibling does not. The capsules page says “1–2 capsules up to 4 times daily” while the insert’s minimum for both labeled adult indications is four capsules — a fourfold gap at the low end. Here the page says “1–2 packets up to four times daily” and the insert says 1–2 packets for IBS and UC maintenance. The low ends agree. It is a small thing and it is the difference between a page you can follow and a page you cannot.
Everything else carries over from the capsules teardown, and it carries over unchanged. Eight organisms, zero designators, one aggregate CFU figure — while the same company publishes five of five designators and the licensor on its women’s vaginal-health supplement. A complete label that exists only as a picture, 3.4 MB and zero extractable characters to two independent parsers. A headline clinical citation that is open-label, unblinded, author-declared underpowered, analysed on 21 patients, and silent about which formulation it tested. A “93% of gastroenterologists” figure from a 2002 survey marked “Data on file”. And a federal appellate injunction — affirmed, published, free to read — barring this product’s sellers from citing the pre-2016 clinical literature as applicable to it, which the product page does not mention.
Credit, also carried over and also real: the potency guarantee is the strong form, stated on the government record verbatim; the quantity is written as “at least”; the cold chain is genuine; the FODMAP Friendly certification was confirmed at the certifier’s own register with this SKU listed by name; and this dosage form’s excipient list is down to two items, cornstarch and silicon dioxide.