One product, one panel, one record.
Walgreens Extra Strength Probiotic Digestive Health Capsules (30 days), 30 Billion CFU — label audit
All ten organisms carry a printed strain designator, and PubMed returns zero records for every one of them. This is a different failure from a species-only label - there the buyer gets no identity at all, here the buyer gets precise identity for organisms with no public clinical record under those names. The back-panel copy calls them "10 of the most active, safe and effective probiotic species" anyway.
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
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- 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 Audited 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes and contributes to none of them.
- How deep this went
- Label audit — the lighter pass What the label says, what basis it gives for its CFU number, whether the strains are coded, whether a government label record exists — checked and published. No full claim inventory was written for this SKU. It is a real result, and it is a shallower one than the teardowns above it, which is why the page says so before you weigh it against them.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
60.0 out of 100
Rank 70 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 60.0 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 | 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 "both-endpoints": 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 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. | 0 / 10 = 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 |
0.6000 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6000. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 60.0 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 | Proprietary Probiotic Blend — 30 Billion CFU‡ / 113 mg‡ |
| What that count is measured against | Both endpoints printed |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 10 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"‡Contains a minimum of 30 Billion CFU (colony forming unit) when manufactured and formulated to provide a minimum of 7.5 Billion CFU at expiration date."
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel prints both a manufacture figure and an expiration figure, so the decline over shelf life is readable off the label itself.
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 paracasei | NI327 | — not stated separately | No records | Lallemand NI327 probiotic |
| Bifidobacterium lactis | NI349 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI349" probiotic |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | NI329 | — not stated separately | No records | Lallemand "NI311" OR "NI312" OR "NI329" |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | NI332 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI332" |
| Bifidobacterium breve | NI312 | — not stated separately | No records | Lallemand "NI311" OR "NI312" OR "NI329" |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | NI311 | — not stated separately | No records | Lallemand "NI311" OR "NI312" OR "NI329" |
| Bifidobacterium infantis | NI313 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI313" probiotic |
| Bifidobacterium longum | NI316 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI316" probiotic |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | NI320 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI320" probiotic |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | NI317 | — not stated separately | No records | "NI317" |
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 — walgreens-300437566-carton-supplement-factshttps://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-extra-strength-probiotic-digestive-health-capsules-(30-days)/ID=300437566-product — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Carton photography obtained through the 5thave-img-cdn.santasmartnetwork.com retailer mirror of the Walgreens listing, downloaded and transcribed directly - walgreens.com refuses automated fetching and the Supplement Facts exists only inside carton JPEGs. Transcribed - Serving Size 1 Capsule, Servings per Container 30; Vitamin C 15 mg (17% DV); Proprietary Probiotic Blend 30 Billion CFU / 113 mg with all ten NI-series organisms in panel order; the § reclassification footnote on NI320; the ‡ dual manufacture-and-expiry footnote; the †† "3X more CFU at time of manufacture" footnote; the † pharmacist footnote; Other Ingredients (Potato Starch, Hypromellose, Magnesium Stearate, Titanium Dioxide); "DOES NOT CONTAIN SOY, DAIRY OR GLUTEN."; storage; UL VERIFIED V907999; (c)2021 Walgreen Co.; MADE IN CANADA. Identification caveat - no GTIN is exposed for this SKU, so the carton was matched by product ID 300437566 on both the Walgreens URL and the mirror, and by carton copy.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — walgreens-300437566-listing-2026-07-31https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-extra-strength-probiotic-digestive-health-capsules-(30-days)/ID=300437566-product — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Walgreens' own listing, source of the live price ("$19.99 $0.67/ea"), the 30-count quantity, and the Buy 1 Get 1 FREE promotion running at this pass.
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
$0.67 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $19.99 USD
- What that buys
- 30 capsules, 1 capsule per serving, 30 servings per container. Walgreens product ID 300437566.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-extra-strength-probiotic-digestive-health-capsules-(30-days)/ID=300437566-product — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| UL Verified Dietary Ingredients | Confirmed at issuer | 31 July 2026 |
UL Verified Dietary Ingredients
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
The carton bears the UL VERIFIED mark with "Verified Dietary Ingredients / verify.UL.com / V907999", and that certificate was checked at UL's own register rather than taken from the badge. UL returns - Company Walgreens; Product "Vitamins & Dietary Supplements"; Scope "Verified dietary ingredients"; Status Active; Expiration 31 December 2026. Two limits ship with the confirmation and may not be separated from it. First, scope - UL's Verified Dietary Ingredients mark verifies that the ingredients declared on the label are what is in the product. It is a label-accuracy and identity claim. It does not certify CFU potency at expiry, strain-level identity to the designator, contaminant limits, or banned-substance status; it is not NSF Certified for Sport and not USP Verified. A shopper who reads the UL triangle as "this 30 billion CFU number has been independently confirmed" has misread it. Second, granularity - the certificate is issued at the Walgreens brand and category level ("Vitamins & Dietary Supplements"), not per SKU, so the mark's presence reflects a programme covering the brand's supplement line rather than a bespoke audit of this probiotic.
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.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 ten-designators-with-zero-published-human-trials-and-a-superiority-claim
The back panel reads, verbatim, "10 of the most active, safe and effective probiotic species" - a comparative efficacy superlative attached to organisms with zero published human trials findable under their printed designators. This is the sharpest claim-versus-evidence gap on the carton. State the absence at exactly its strength - no publicly published human RCT is findable under these names, which is not the same as proof the strains are untested.
The record: Carton back-panel copy against PubMed queries "NI332" (0), "NI317" (0), "NI313" probiotic (0), "NI316" probiotic (0), Lallemand NI327 probiotic (0), and second-pass spellings "NI-332" (0) and "NI 332" probiotic (0) - all run 2026-07-31
Finding 2 seventy-five-per-cent-disclosed-decay
The footnote reads "Contains a minimum of 30 Billion CFU when manufactured and formulated to provide a minimum of 7.5 Billion CFU at expiration date." The disclosure is honest and the size of the gap is the story - the front-of-pack "30 BILLION ACTIVE CULTURES PER CAPSULE" is four times the guaranteed end-of-life dose.
The record: Carton Supplement Facts footnote, transcribed from carton photography via the retailer mirror of Walgreens product 300437566, 2026-07-31
Finding 3 the-biggest-headline-number-has-the-smallest-guaranteed-dose
By expiry this "Extra Strength / 30 billion" product delivers 7.5 billion - less than the 12.5 billion expiry floor of the cheaper four-strain Walgreens Super Probiotic, and less than the 10 billion at expiry of the Walgreens Daily Probiotic. Within Walgreens' own store-brand range, the largest number on the front corresponds to the smallest number guaranteed at the end.
The record: Carton footnotes of Walgreens products 300437566 (7.5B at expiry), 300417758 (12.5B at expiry) and 300435852 (10B at expiry), all transcribed from carton photography 2026-07-31
Finding 4 three-times-more-cfu-is-anchored-to-the-manufacture-figure
The footnote reads "††Provides 3X more CFU than Walgreens Probiotic at time of manufacture." The superiority comparison is anchored to the manufacture number - the one figure that never reaches the consumer. Compared at expiry it would tell a different story.
The record: Carton footnote ††, transcribed 2026-07-31, against the same range's expiry floors
Finding 5 proprietary-blend-designators-without-a-dose-split
Every organism carries a designator and the whole thing is still labelled a "Proprietary Probiotic Blend" with one 113 mg / 30 Billion CFU total. Ten organisms share it in undisclosed proportion; any one could be a token inclusion.
The record: Carton Supplement Facts panel, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 6 marketing-names-four-of-the-ten-organisms
The back-panel copy names Bifidobacterium infantis, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis and Lactobacillus rhamnosus - the four most consumer-recognisable of the ten. The copy calls them "species", which is correct, while the front of pack says "EXTRA STRENGTH" and implies strain-level engineering.
The record: Carton back-panel copy, verbatim, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 7 the-ul-mark-does-not-cover-the-cartons-central-claim
The UL VERIFIED mark is real and was confirmed at UL's own register - certificate V907999, status Active, expiring 31 December 2026. Its scope is "Verified dietary ingredients", a label-accuracy claim. It does not certify CFU potency at expiry, strain-level identity, contaminant limits or banned-substance status, and it is issued brand-wide rather than per SKU. It sits on a carton whose headline claim is a potency number it does not cover.
The record: verify.ul.com certificate V907999 - Company Walgreens, Product "Vitamins & Dietary Supplements", Scope "Verified dietary ingredients", Status Active, Expiration 31 December 2026 - queried 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://verify.ul.com — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 8 our-pharmacists-recommend-the-walgreens-brand
An in-house endorsement footnote placed in the visual position of a substantiation footnote. Walgreens attesting to Walgreens.
The record: Carton footnote †, verbatim - "Our pharmacists recommend the Walgreens brand." - transcribed 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.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- How the 30 billion CFU is split across the ten organisms
- Not disclosed. The panel prints a single "Proprietary Probiotic Blend - 30 Billion CFU / 113 mg" line. Ten organisms share that total in undisclosed proportion, so any one of them could be a token inclusion. You get identity without dose.
- Whether the NI-series strains have been trialled at all
- Unknown, and stated at exactly that strength. PubMed returns zero records under every designator printed on this label, re-queried in a second pass with alternative spellings. Absence of a published record under a printed designator does not prove the strains are untested - a manufacturer may hold unpublished or differently-designated data. What can be said is that no publicly published human RCT is findable under the names on this carton.
- A GTIN for this SKU
- None is exposed anywhere. The carton was matched to the SKU in the brief by product ID 300437566 on both the Walgreens URL and the retailer mirror the photographs came from, and by carton copy. That is a weaker identification than the barcode match available on the two sibling SKUs, and it is recorded here rather than smoothed over.
- What the UL mark actually covers
- It was confirmed at the issuer, and its scope is narrower than the carton's central claim. UL's Verified Dietary Ingredients programme verifies label-declared ingredient identity. It does not verify CFU potency at expiry - which is the number the front of pack leads with - and the certificate is issued brand-wide rather than per SKU.
- Any government label record
- None exists. Seven searches were run - DSLD brand filters "Walgreens" / "Well At Walgreens" (5 records, none of them this SKU) and "Finest Nutrition" (2 records, no match); free-text "Well at Walgreens Extra Strength Probiotic Digestive Health"; and designator queries on NI317 and NI332, 0 hits each.
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 carton names every strain it contains, and not one of those names returns a published human trial.
Ten organisms, ten designators: NI327, NI349, NI329, NI332, NI312, NI311, NI313, NI316, NI320, NI317.
PubMed returns zero records for each of them. The queries were re-run in a second pass with
alternative spellings — "NI-332", "NI 332" probiotic — and returned zero again. One combined query
returned a single hit, and it was read rather than counted: PMID 28949355, a 2017 Dalton
Transactions paper on intermetallic borides, matching on the token Ni. A confirmed false positive.
That is a different failure from the usual one. A species-only label gives a buyer no identity at all. This label gives precise identity for organisms with no public clinical record under those names. Both leave a buyer unable to connect the bottle to evidence, and both should be said differently. The honest statement here is not “these strains are untested” — a manufacturer may hold unpublished or differently-designated data. It is that no publicly published human RCT is findable under the designators printed on this carton.
And then the back panel says: “10 of the most active, safe and effective probiotic species.” A comparative efficacy superlative, on those organisms. That is the sharpest claim-versus-evidence gap on this label.
The CFU disclosure is honest, and the size of what it discloses is the story. Verbatim: “‡Contains a minimum of 30 Billion CFU (colony forming unit) when manufactured and formulated to provide a minimum of 7.5 Billion CFU at expiration date.” Both endpoints, printed. Seventy-five per cent decay — the front-of-pack “30 BILLION ACTIVE CULTURES PER CAPSULE” is four times the guaranteed end-of-life dose.
Which produces an inversion inside Walgreens’ own range. By expiry this Extra Strength product delivers 7.5 billion — less than the 12.5 billion floor of the cheaper four-strain Super Probiotic, and less than the 10 billion of the Daily Probiotic. The biggest headline number has the smallest guaranteed dose. The carton’s own superiority footnote is anchored to the same soft end: “††Provides 3X more CFU than Walgreens Probiotic at time of manufacture” — a comparison at the one figure that never reaches a consumer.
The certification is real, and it is narrower than it looks. The carton bears the UL VERIFIED mark with certificate V907999, and UL’s own register confirms it: Company Walgreens, Scope “Verified dietary ingredients”, Status Active, expiring 31 December 2026. That was checked at the issuer, not read off the badge, and it is the only confirmed certification in the batch this was audited alongside. But UL’s Verified Dietary Ingredients programme verifies that the ingredients declared on the label are what is in the product. It does not certify potency at expiry, strain-level identity, contaminant limits or banned-substance status. It is not NSF Certified for Sport and not USP Verified. It also issues at the brand and category level — “Vitamins & Dietary Supplements” — not per SKU. Anyone reading the UL triangle as confirmation of the 30 billion has misread it.
Credit where it is earned. The § footnote on NI320 reads “Previously scientifically categorized as Lactobacillus casei” — a correct disclosure of the 2020 reclassification that almost every other label in this project simply ignores. The back-panel copy correctly says species where it means species. Ten designators are printed rather than hidden. And at $0.67 a day — $0.33 on the buy-one-get-one running at this pass — it is among the cheapest products this project has looked at.
Two remaining marks against it. Every one of those ten organisms sits inside a single “Proprietary Probiotic Blend” of 113 mg, so identity comes without dose and any one of them could be a token inclusion. And the footnote “†Our pharmacists recommend the Walgreens brand” is an in-house endorsement sitting exactly where a substantiation footnote would sit.