Count what has an amount
Go to the Supplement Facts panel and count the lines carrying a milligram or microgram figure. On this product the panel is printed in full, so the count is seven ingredients named and seven amounts published.
Guides To Reading A Supplement Label
Written by the Memoahoney Editorial Desk · Reviewed by Dr. Judith Leone-Friedman, neuropsychologist · Revised
Three guides that apply to any bottle in this aisle, not only to this one.
Quick answer
These guides cover the three things a buyer most needs here. The first explains proprietary blends: what they are, why they are legal under 21 CFR 101.36(c), and the ceiling arithmetic that descending order of predominance by weight makes possible. The second explains what a structure and function claim is, what the marks on a pack are for, and the line between a permitted claim and a disease claim no supplement may make. The third explains how to match a dose to a study: the four numbers the comparison needs, where each comes from, and what can still be worked out when a seller publishes no panel at all.
The three guides
Proprietary Blends: What You Can Still Work Out
What a proprietary blend is, why it is legal, and the one piece of arithmetic the descending-order rule hands you — with the method written out so you can apply it to any blend on any shelf.
How To Read A Supplement Claim
What a structure and function claim is, what the asterisk is actually for, where the disclaimer has to sit, and the line between a permitted claim and a disease claim no supplement may make.
Matching A Dose To A Study
The four numbers you need to check a supplement against its evidence, where each one comes from, and what can still be worked out when a seller publishes no Supplement Facts panel at all.
Why these three
Because they are the three skills that would have saved us most of the work on this site.
The first is about proprietary blends. A blend declares one total weight for several ingredients and prints no individual amounts. There is exactly one thing you can still work out from it, it takes a single division, and almost nobody knows it is there — and it is worth knowing why even that much is unavailable on a product with no panel.
The second is about reading a claim. Almost everything printed on the front of a supplement is either a structure and function claim, a badge, or a mood. Being able to tell which is which takes about ten minutes to learn and changes how every pack in the aisle reads.
The third is about checking a dose against the research. It is the skill this site uses on every page, it needs no training to learn, and on a product that publishes no amounts it is the guide that explains exactly what is lost.
None of the three is about MemoHoney. All three are written so they would still be useful if you never bought this product at all.
Three things to check on any supplement label
Look for a standardisation
An extract without a standardisation percentage cannot be compared with a study, even if its weight is printed. Look for a per cent figure beside any ingredient described as an extract.
Read the caution panel before the claims
It is the one part of a label written by somebody worried about being wrong, and it usually names age, pregnancy, nursing and medical conditions. This product prints a complete four-part caution panel, and our safety page quotes it in full beside named sources.
A note on these guides
Both are general explainers about regulations and categories. Neither is medical advice, and neither makes any claim about what any product does. Where a guide quotes a regulation or a public health body, the source is named in full so you can read it yourself.
How to use these guides
Read the first one with a bottle in your hand. Any bottle — it does not have to be this one, and the guide is more convincing when tested on a product nobody is selling you.
Sort the front panel into claims, badges and moods. Then find the disclaimer and check what the asterisks connect to. Then turn the bottle over and count the ingredients with a printed weight against the ones inside a blend.
That whole exercise takes about two minutes once you have done it twice, and it is the most useful two minutes available to anyone shopping in this category.
Read the dose-matching guide before buying any supplement in this aisle, from any brand. It sets out the four numbers a comparison needs, where each one comes from, and — the part most guides skip — what can still be worked out when a seller publishes no Supplement Facts panel at all.
What these guides are not
They are not medical advice, and neither one recommends taking or not taking anything. They are about how to read a label and how to think about a category.
They are not legal advice either. Where a guide quotes a regulation, it quotes it in full and links to the source so you can read the surrounding text yourself, because a regulation quoted in fragments is easy to misuse.
And they are not about this product. All three were written so they would still be worth reading if you never bought MemoHoney, which is the only honest test of whether a guide on a retailer's website is a guide or an advertisement.
A short vocabulary for the supplement aisle
Twelve words and phrases that appear on almost every pack, with what each one actually commits to.
| Phrase | What it commits to |
|---|---|
| Supports | Nothing specific. No defined threshold exists |
| Proprietary blend | A total weight and a descending order. No individual amounts |
| Standardised extract | A stated percentage of a marker compound. Checkable |
| % Daily Value | A ratio against a published FDA figure. Calculable |
| FDA-registered facility | The factory is on a list. Not an approval |
| FDA approved | Never true of a supplement |
| GMP certified | Rules about process, not about contents |
| Doctor formulated | Nothing, unless a doctor is named and checkable |
| Natural | No regulatory definition |
| Clinically studied | Ask: which ingredient, at what dose, and is that the dose here? |
| Money-back guarantee | A purchase term with a number of days. Enforceable |
| Certificate of analysis | A laboratory document. A reference number is not one |
One more habit worth having
Photograph the Supplement Facts panel of anything you take, and keep the photographs in one place on your phone. It takes seconds, it survives the bottle being thrown away, and it is the single most useful thing you can hand to a pharmacist or a clinician who asks what you are taking.
Guides To Reading A Supplement Label: common questions
Is there a proprietary blend?
No, and it is the best thing about this label. Every dietary ingredient carries a printed amount. Nothing is concealed inside a total weight, nothing is described only as part of a matrix, and the panel can be added up by anyone with a calculator. Of the products this desk has reviewed, this is the first with a full house.
Why does full disclosure matter so much to you?
Because it is the difference between a review and a guess. When amounts are hidden, the most a site can honestly say is what an ingredient does in the literature and that nobody can tell how much is in the bottle. When they are printed, the comparison against the research becomes arithmetic, and arithmetic can be checked by the reader.
What is in it?
Per capsule: niacin 7.5 mg NE, calcium as calcium carbonate 18 mg, L-arginine base 200 mg, L-arginine AKG 2:1 extract 200 mg, L-citrulline HCl 100 mg, L-citrulline malate 100 mg and beta alanine 40 mg. Other ingredients: hypromellose vegetable capsule, vegetable stearate and silicon dioxide. The seven declared amounts come to 665.5 mg, which is our addition rather than the label's.
Is it FDA approved?
No dietary supplement is. The FDA “does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed”. The listing's badge says a registered facility, which is an administrative filing about a factory rather than an assessment of the product.
Who makes it?
The manufacturer is not named. The label prints Distributed by: Instituto Experience, PO Box 12730, Ogden, UT 84404, with a telephone number and an email. 21 CFR 101.5 requires the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer or distributor, and permits a street address to be omitted only if it is shown in a current city or telephone directory. We could not verify that either way.
Are the claims allowed?
The bottle's claim is ordinary structure-function wording and names no disease. The listing's five reach further — protect the brain from oxidative stress and improve mental clarity use verbs of prevention and outcome — but still name no disease. Our claims page takes each one separately.
Ready to try MemoHoney?
One bottle is 30 capsules at one a day, so a bottle is thirty days and the 60-day guarantee still has thirty left to run when it ends. The guarantee runs from purchase, not from delivery, and the price is shown at checkout.
Order NowRead the label firstNo price was published to us. We print no figure we have not seen ourselves. · 60-day guarantee from purchase · Not for under 18, pregnancy or nursing