Proprietary blends: what the total is not telling you
A blend total tells you what is in the bottle but not how much of each. Here is the one rule that still gives you leverage.
A proprietary blend lists several ingredients under one combined total, so you learn the names but not the amounts. It is legal, it is extremely common, and it is the most effective way a fully compliant label can tell you far less than it appears to.
How it works
Instead of listing each ingredient with its own figure, the panel shows a blend name and a single number. A 500 mg blend containing three ingredients could be 460 mg of one and 20 mg each of the others. The label is accurate either way and there is no way to tell which.
The one rule that still helps
Ingredients inside a blend must be listed in descending order by weight. The first-named is present in the largest amount and the last in the smallest. That gives you the ordering if not the numbers — and when the ingredient the marketing is built around appears last, that is genuinely informative.
Why companies use them
The stated reason is protecting a formula from being copied, and occasionally that is sincere. More often, full disclosure would show that a headline ingredient sits well below the amount used in the research that made it famous — present enough to name, not enough to matter.
What a disclosed label lets you do
- Compare against research. If citrulline is listed at 6 g, you can look up what trials used and judge for yourself.
- Compare between products. Two disclosed labels can be placed side by side. Two blends cannot.
- Screen against medication. A pharmacist can assess a named amount. They cannot assess "part of a 500 mg blend".
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BloodPril's label lists one 500 mg blend of L-arginine HCl, L-arginine alpha-ketoglutarate and L-citrulline malate. The names are there; the amounts are not. That is the central limitation of an otherwise unusually short and focused label.
It matters more here than it would for most products, because the research behind these ingredients is unusually specific: published citrulline work on systolic blood pressure has used doses around six grams daily. Without the split, you cannot tell how far below that figure you are — only that you are. The full label breakdown is here.
A quick shopping rule
If you cannot see the amount of the ingredient you are buying the product for, you are buying on trust. Sometimes that is an acceptable trade. It should always be a conscious choice rather than something the label slipped past you.