Explainer · 2 min read
What One Berry Gummy Can Physically Hold
A gummy is mostly not active ingredient, and nothing supplied with this product says what the rest of it is.
A gummy has to be sweet enough to chew, firm enough to hold shape and stable enough to sit on a shelf. All three take mass.
That mass is syrup, a gelling agent — gelatin or pectin — colour and flavour, and it is declared on the other ingredients line.
No other-ingredients line was supplied to this site.
So the two things a reader would want to know — how much room is left for ten actives, and whether the gelling agent is animal or plant — are both unanswered.
The vegetarian mark, and the question it raises
A vegetarian seal was supplied with this product. Gelatin is made from animal collagen and is not vegetarian; pectin is from fruit and is. A gummy is set with one or the other.
So the seal is a claim that the missing other-ingredients line would confirm or contradict in a single word. This site publishes the seal, says what it is a claim about, and does not guess which word is on the bottle.
What this site will not do with that
There is a tempting piece of arithmetic available here: take a typical gummy weight, subtract a typical syrup and gelling fraction, and announce how many milligrams are left for ten ingredients. It would look rigorous and it would be invented, because every number in it would be this desk's assumption rather than this product's measurement.
The honest version is shorter. The form puts a real limit on how much active a once-daily gummy can carry; the size of that limit for this product is not known to this site; and the document that would state it was not supplied.
Still deciding?
The two numbers to hold on to: 60 days to ask for your money back, and the seller's own many wait 90 days
before the product can be judged. The third number is the one that is missing — how much of anything is in the gummy.
Where to buy itThe 60-day window
- Ten ingredients named, none with an amount
- No Supplement Facts panel was supplied to this site
- U.S. stocking partner for Alpha Erec
Prices on this site were supplied with the product pack. The checkout governs, and no delivery date is printed here because none was supplied.
What is worth asking
- What is the gummy set with — gelatin or pectin?
- What is the net weight of one gummy?
- Is there a proprietary blend, and what is its total?
- Are zinc and vitamin D3 in it, and at what amounts?
- What are the allergens?
Questions
Are gummies worse than capsules?
Not worse — different. They carry less active mass for their size and more excipient, and they are more heat-sensitive. Whether that matters depends on amounts, which is the thing not declared here.
Does the sugar matter?
It might, to somebody managing blood sugar. It would be on the panel, which was not supplied.
Is the vegetarian claim wrong?
This site has no reason to think so, and no way to check it. Both sentences are true at once and both are printed.
Sources
- 21 CFR 101.36 — Nutrition labeling of dietary supplementsU.S. Electronic Code of Federal RegulationsThe rule that
the label of a dietary supplement that is offered for sale shall bear nutrition labeling in accordance with this regulation
, and the proprietary-blend rules on total weight and descending order of predominance by weight. - Ashwagandha: Usefulness and SafetyNIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative HealthThe three-month short-term safety window, the liver-injury cases, and the prostate-cancer caution that follows from the testosterone signal.
What this page was checked against
Every figure on it is transcribed from the supplied Supplement Facts panel and checked-out pack, derived by arithmetic from those, or taken from a source on the references page.