The word “proprietary”, and what it is doing on a label
“Proprietary blend” sounds like a description of the formula. It is a description of a disclosure choice: a permission in the labeling rules that lets a manufacturer print one weight where several would otherwise go.
US labeling rules allow the ingredients of a blend to be grouped under one name with a single total weight, provided they are listed in descending order of predominance. The word proprietary is what that permission is called on a label.
The argument for it is trade secrecy. The argument holds for the exact ratio and holds much less well for everything else a buyer might want, most of which could be published without giving the formula away.
Where the phrase comes from
A category created by statute, and a labeling rule written to fit it.
The modern American dietary supplement was defined by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which set supplements apart from both foods and drugs and gave them their own labeling regime. Supplement Facts panels, structure/function claims and the disclaimer printed on the back of every bottle all come from that settlement.
Within that regime, 21 CFR 101.36 sets out what the panel must contain. It is the section that requires the serving size, the quantitative amounts, the daily values where they exist, and the footnote where they do not. It also contains the provision that allows a group of ingredients to be declared as a blend under a single collective name with a single total.
“Proprietary” is not a technical term for a kind of formula. It is the word the industry settled on for a label using that provision.
What the regulation actually permits
Precision matters here, because the permission is narrower than the label makes it look.
The permission is to withhold the individual weights. It is not a permission to withhold the ingredients, to reorder them, or to leave the total off. A compliant blend still has to name everything in it, print one weight for the whole group, and list the names in descending order of predominance by weight.
That last requirement is the one that undercuts the secrecy the rest of the provision provides. The order is a ranking, and a ranking plus a total is arithmetic: the ingredient in position k can be no more than the total divided by k. The regulation gives with one hand and takes back rather more than most labels appear to notice.
- Permitted: one collective name, one total weight, no individual amounts.
- Required anyway: every ingredient named, in descending order of weight, with the total stated for a stated serving size.
- Not permitted: an order chosen for effect, a missing ingredient, or a total that describes a different serving from the one printed.
So a blend label is not a blank. It is a partially redacted document in which the redactions are ordered, and ordered redactions leak.
The trade-secret argument, on its own terms
Taken seriously first, because it is not a foolish argument.
The case runs like this. A formulator spends real money arriving at a ratio: which extracts, at what proportions, in what carrier. Printing that ratio on the bottle hands it to any competitor with a scanner and no development costs at all. Copying is cheap, formulating is not, and a rule that made every formula public would reward the copier.
There is a second, quieter version. A manufacturer may adjust the internal proportions between production runs as raw material potencies change, and printed weights would mean a new label each time.
Both arguments are about the ratio. They are strongest where the ratio really is the invention, which is more often true of a flavour system or a delivery matrix than of a list of eight botanicals that appear together on a hundred other shelves.
Where the argument is weak
Four problems, none of which requires assuming bad faith.
- The secret is not very secret
- A competitor motivated enough to copy a formula can have it analyzed in a laboratory. A proprietary blend keeps the ratio from the buyer far more effectively than it keeps it from the industry.
- It hides the uninteresting as well as the interesting
- The provision covers the whole blend. A manufacturer with nothing distinctive in its ratio gets the same protection as one with a genuine invention, and the buyer cannot tell the two apart.
- It makes an underdose indistinguishable from a full dose
- Two products with identical panels can contain wildly different amounts of the same ingredient. Where the cost of the ingredients differs by an order of magnitude, the incentive runs one way.
- It removes the buyer’s ability to compare
- A dose that is known can be compared with a trial. A dose inside a blend can only be compared with a ceiling, and a ceiling is usually well above whatever is actually there.
None of this makes a proprietary blend improper. It is legal, it is common, and a label using the provision is following the rules. What it does mean is that the reason given for the redaction and the effect of the redaction are not the same thing.
What a seller could publish without losing anything
Everything below can be disclosed while keeping the exact ratio entirely secret.
The trade-secret argument protects one specific thing: the proportions. It protects nothing else, and a great deal of what a careful buyer wants is not the proportions.
- Standardization figures. The marker compound percentage for each extract, or the extract ratio. Without one, a milligram is a milligram of unspecified plant material.
- The elemental content of a mineral. A chelate is a raw material, not an element. Publishing the elemental figure tells a buyer what the mineral actually delivers and gives away no ratio.
- A floor for one named ingredient. “Contains at least 300 mg of X” discloses a minimum without disclosing the split — and it is the single most useful sentence a blend label could carry.
- Origin and processing of an animal-derived ingredient. Country, source and method. None of this is a formulation secret and all of it matters to the reader who cares.
- A certificate of analysis. Identity and contaminant testing for the finished lot, published rather than referenced by number.
A manufacturer that published those five would still have a proprietary blend, would still have kept its ratio, and would have answered nearly every question a careful buyer actually has. The gap between what is withheld and what needs to be withheld is where the argument stops being about trade secrets.
What to ask a seller, in writing
The reader’s half of the previous section: four requests that cost a seller no ratio at all, and a table of what the label already owed you before you asked.
A request lands better when it does not ask for something already printed. So it is worth being clear first about what a compliant blend panel has to give you, and what it is permitted to keep.
| What a buyer wants to know | On the panel? | So the move is |
|---|---|---|
| Every ingredient in the blend, by name | Yes | Read it off the label |
| The printed order, heaviest first | Yes | Read it off the label |
| One total weight, for a stated serving | Yes | Read it off the label |
| The weight of any single ingredient | No | Ask, and expect a refusal |
| A standardization or extract ratio | No | Ask — costs no ratio |
| The elemental content of a mineral chelate | No | Ask — costs no ratio |
| A stated minimum for one named ingredient | No | Ask — costs no ratio |
| A certificate of analysis for the lot | No | Ask — costs no ratio |
Scroll this table sideways →
The four rows marked as costing no ratio are the ones worth an email. None of them discloses the split, which is the only thing the trade-secret argument is about.
Ask for the standardization, extract by extract
A marker percentage or an extract ratio for each botanical. This turns a milligram of unspecified plant material into a milligram of something in particular, and it tells a competitor nothing about proportions.
Ask for a voluntary minimum on one named ingredient
“This product contains at least X of Y per serving” is a floor, not a split. It is the single most useful sentence a blend could carry, and a seller confident in its formula loses nothing by writing it down.
Ask for the elemental figure behind any mineral
A chelate is a raw material and an element is what the body is offered. The conversion between the two is chemistry, not formulation, and it decides whether a mineral in a blend is a real dose or a decoration.
Ask for the certificate of analysis, not its number
Identity and contaminant testing for the lot in your hand. A reference number is not a result: the reference supplied for this product is a draft label reference rather than a test report, and this site says so wherever it appears.
Send it as one message, keep it short, and keep the reply. An answer to any of the four is worth more than the marketing on the front of the bottle, because it is a statement the seller has chosen to make in writing about a specific figure.
A refusal is an answer too. A seller who declines to give an elemental figure is declining to give something the trade-secret argument never covered, and the reader is entitled to read that for what it is.
What this label does
The provision, applied to the panel this site is about.
The SodaPeak panel prints Test Boost Proprietary Blend at 1,200 mg for a two-capsule serving, with eight ingredients listed inside it and no individual amount for any of them. That is the provision used exactly as it is written, and it is legal.
None of the five disclosures above is present. There is no icariin percentage for the horny goat weed, no eurycomanone figure for the tongkat ali, no fatty acid content for the saw palmetto and no elemental figure for the boron chelate. A certificate reference number was supplied to this site; no certificate was.
What the label does give, because the regulation requires it, is the order. Eight names, heaviest first, against a stated total. That is enough to compute eight ceilings, and enough for one of them to settle a question outright.
How the ceiling arithmetic works →Proprietary blends, explained →The panel, transcribed →
References
The sources behind the numbers on this page.
- U.S. Government Publishing Office21 CFR 101.36 — Nutrition labeling of dietary supplements, including the proprietary blend and descending-order requirements — Code of Federal Regulations · source
- U.S. Government Publishing Office21 CFR 101.93 — Certain types of statements for dietary supplements — Code of Federal Regulations · source
- U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationQuestions and Answers on Dietary Supplements — FDA.gov · source
- NIH Office of Dietary SupplementsBoron — Health Professional Fact Sheet — ods.od.nih.gov · source
See the SodaPeak packs
One, three or six bottles. The price is on the seller’s checkout page, because it is the one figure this site was never given — and a figure we were not given is not a figure we will print.
Shipping and the guarantee term are shown at checkout. This site publishes no number it was not able to verify.