Label guide
How to read a supplement label
A guide to reading any dietary supplement label sold in the United States, taught from the five statements the FDA lists as required. It ends with a checklist short enough to run through while holding a bottle in a shop.
The FDA’s labeling guide is explicit: “Five statements are required: 1) the statement of identity, 2) the net quantity of contents statement, 3) the nutrition labeling, 4) the ingredient list, and 5) the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer, or distributor.” Learn those five and you can assess any bottle in the aisle in about a minute. Dentanol supplies the first two and none of the last three, which makes it an unusually clear worked example.
Why the five, and not some other list
The most useful distinction a buyer can hold on to is between what a label must carry and what it merely tends to carry. The five below are the must. Everything else — seals, badges, claims, endorsements — is optional decoration, and a label can be covered in it while missing two of the five.
Here is the source, quoted rather than paraphrased:
“Five statements are required: 1) the statement of identity (name of the dietary supplement), 2) the net quantity of contents statement (amount of the dietary supplement), 3) the nutrition labeling, 4) the ingredient list, and 5) the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer, or distributor.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter I. General Dietary Supplement Labeling
Each is taken in turn below: what it is, what it lets a reader do, and what its absence costs. Dentanol is the worked example throughout, because a product supplying two of the five shows the function of the missing three more clearly than a good label ever could.
1. Statement of identity
What it is. The name of the product and a statement of what kind of thing it is. On a supplement that usually means the brand name plus the words Dietary Supplement, and it must appear on the front panel.
What it lets you do. Know what category of product you are holding, which sounds trivial until you are in a shop where teas, foods, cosmetics and supplements share a shelf. The words Dietary Supplement also tell you which rules apply: no pre-market approval, structure-function claims permitted, disease claims not.
The worked example. Supplied, and correctly. The front of this bottle reads Dentanol and Dietary Supplement. That is the first of the five, done properly, and it is worth crediting.
2. Net quantity of contents
What it is. How much is in the container, on the front panel: a count of tablets or capsules, or a weight or volume.
What it lets you do. Divide. It is the first half of every per-unit calculation a buyer makes — cost per tablet, cost per day, how long a bottle lasts. It is also the figure that makes two bottles at different prices comparable at all.
The worked example. Supplied: 30 chewable tablets. And here is the lesson, because it shows how the five interact. A count alone gets you half way: cost per tablet can be calculated — $2.63, $1.97 or $1.63 depending on the pack — but cost per day cannot, because that needs a serving size, which lives on the missing third statement. Two of five are supplied, and the second is already only half usable.
3. Nutrition labeling
What it is. The Supplement Facts panel: a box, usually on the back or the side, carrying the serving size, the number of servings in the container, each dietary ingredient, the amount of each per serving, and a percent Daily Value where one has been established.
What it lets you do. Almost everything. It is the only place on a label where quantity lives, and quantity is what separates a supplement from a decoration. It tells you how much to take, how long the bottle lasts, and whether a serving is anywhere near the amount used in any published study. Every comparison between two bottles happens here.
The worked example. Not supplied. No Supplement Facts panel appears on any image, graphic or document that reached this desk — not a poor one, none at all. The consequences are set out on the label facts page, and they cascade: no serving size means no duration and no cost per day; no amounts means no comparison with anything.
The single most useful habit in this aisle
Turn the bottle around before you read the front. The front panel is written to sell and the Supplement Facts panel is written to comply, and the second contains all of the information. If there is no panel, you have learned the most important thing about the product in about two seconds, and you can put it back.
4. The ingredient list
What it is. Every dietary ingredient, named. For botanicals that means the common name and, properly done, the Latin binomial and the plant part. Alongside it sits the Other Ingredients line, which carries the excipients: the binders, fillers, capsule shells, sweeteners and flavours.
What it lets you do. Four things, each of which a real person needs on a real day. Check a product against an allergy or an intolerance. Check it against a prescription, because an interaction is a relationship between two named substances. Check it against a dietary or religious rule. And look up what has been published about anything in it, which begins with having a name to type.
The worked example. Not supplied, and this is the finding around which the rest of this site is organised. No ingredient is named anywhere on this product — not on the bottle, not in the marketing, not in the seller pack. The Other Ingredients line reads: Not published. No Other Ingredients line was supplied.
In its place is a circular graphic of eight uncaptioned photographs of plants. The second guide on this site is entirely about why that is not a substitute, and the short version is that a picture cannot be typed into a search box, cannot be shown to a pharmacist and cannot be checked against an allergy.
5. Name and place of business
What it is. The name and address of the manufacturer, the packer or the distributor. One of the three, with a real place attached.
What it lets you do. Find somebody accountable. It answers every question a label itself cannot: what is really in this, has there been a recall, where was it made, who do I complain to. It is the statement that makes a product traceable to an organisation rather than to a brand name and a checkout page.
The worked example. Not supplied. Not printed on anything supplied to this desk — no company, no street address, no country of manufacture. The two New York addresses published on this site belong to the retail desk that sells the product and writes these pages, and a retail desk is not a manufacturer, a packer or a distributor. Publishing an address beside a product is not the same as the product carrying one.
The proprietary blend trick, and why it is still better than nothing
One more thing worth knowing before the checklist, because it is the most common way a panel tells you less than it appears to. A proprietary blend groups several ingredients under one name and prints a single total weight for the group. The FDA’s nutrition labeling chapter sets out the requirement:
“You must identify proprietary blends by use of the term “Proprietary Blend” or an appropriately descriptive term or fanciful name. On the same line, you must list the total weight of all “other dietary ingredients” contained in the blend.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV. Nutrition Labeling
So a blend is legitimate, and it is the point at which a panel stops being useful for comparison: you learn that five named things together weigh 500 mg, not how much of each. A blend heavy on a cheap bulking ingredient and one heavy on an expensive extract print identically.
And yet notice what even the worst blend still gives you. The ingredients are named. You can check them against an allergy, show the list to a pharmacist and look each one up. A blend withholds the amounts, not the names — which is the gap between a panel to be sceptical of and no panel at all.
The checklist, for a shop
Eight checks, in order, on any bottle in any shop. The first four are the five statements compressed; the last four are the questions that most often go unasked. It takes under a minute once you have done it twice.
- Turn it over. Is there a Supplement Facts panel at all? If not, stop here. Nothing else on the label can compensate.
- Find the serving size and the servings per container. Multiply. Does the bottle last as long as the marketing implies, and is the price you are comparing a price for the same number of days?
- Read the ingredient list. Is every ingredient named? For botanicals, is there a Latin name and a plant part, or just a common name?
- Read the Other Ingredients line. This is where an allergen hides, especially on a chewable or a gummy, which need sweeteners and flavours a capsule does not.
- Find the amounts. Is there a number beside each ingredient, or one number beside a blend? If it is a blend, you can check names but not doses.
- Find the maker. Is there a company and a place? A post-office box is thin; nothing at all is a red flag.
- Read the caution block. Age, pregnancy, nursing, medication, and an instruction to consult a clinician. Its absence is not a clearance.
- Check that a claim has an asterisk and that the asterisk leads somewhere. The disclaimer should be printed on the same panel, in the standard wording.
Run that against Dentanol and it stops at step one. Run it against most bottles on a pharmacy shelf and it passes seven or eight — which is the point of learning it. The checklist is not an accusation; it is a way of finding out quickly which conversation you are having.
References
Two documents are quoted on this page, both in full rather than in summary.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2026). Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter I. General Dietary Supplement Labeling.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2026). Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV. Nutrition Labeling.
Ask for the panel before you pay
Thirty chewable tablets, a published price to the cent, and a 60-day money-back window. What is not published is the Supplement Facts panel, the ingredient list, the serving size and the allergen statement. The order desk can be asked for all four in writing, and that request costs nothing.
60-day window · Questions first? Call +1 (302) 200-3480