How we review
The method, the scoring, and the honest limits of what this kind of review can tell you.
The five criteria we score
Every product review on this site carries a rating out of 5, and that rating is the average of five sub-scores. We publish all five, because a single number hides which part failed.
- Dose transparency. Does the label state milligram amounts per ingredient, or does it hide behind a proprietary blend? This is the criterion most products fail hardest.
- Evidence behind the ingredients. Not whether studies exist, but whether they tested the same form, at the same dose, in the same population. An ingredient with fifty studies at a dose the product does not deliver scores low here.
- Formulation and delivery. Does the format the company chose actually carry the amount that matters? A tincture and a softgel of the same botanical are not interchangeable, and laboratory data shows the difference can be twentyfold.
- Price against alternatives. Compared against what a pharmacy shelf charges for the same active ingredient at a studied dose.
- Guarantee and refund mechanics. Not whether a guarantee is advertised, but how it actually works: who processes it, what the window is, and whether opened bottles qualify.
What we check, source by source
- Ingredient claims against the National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, PubMed and Cochrane
- Mineral and vitamin loads against the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements recommended intakes and tolerable upper limits
- Thyroid-relevant compounds against the American Thyroid Association
- Clinical guidance against the American Urological Association
- Drug interactions against MedlinePlus and the National Cancer Institute
Every number we publish carries the source it came from. If we cannot source a number, we do not publish it, and we say that we could not find it. An absence is itself information.
Document review is not a clinical trial
This is the limit, and we would rather state it than have you discover it.
Reading a label carefully tells you what a product can and cannot plausibly deliver. It does not tell you how a specific product will affect a specific person in a specific body. Nobody who writes a review can tell you that, including the reviewers who claim they can. When a review promises you a personal outcome, you are reading marketing.
Where a product has a refund guarantee, we say so plainly, because the guarantee is the only honest way to answer the question a document review cannot.
What we refuse to do
- Publish a side effect rate for a product with no published safety trial
- Present ingredient research as if it were research on the finished product
- Describe a personal experience that did not happen
- Present a manufacturing certification as if it were regulatory approval of the product
- Let a commission rate influence a score
See also our editorial guidelines and affiliate disclosure.