Thirty-six milligrams
A probiotic is defined by an adequate amount of live organisms. This label gives a weight of powder. The two are not the same thing, and this page is about the distance between them.
The panel declares a 36 mg Probiotic Blend containing Bifidobacterium infantis, Clostridium butyricum and Akkermansia muciniphila. That is a weight of powder, not a count of organisms, and US regulations require nothing more.
No colony-forming unit figure appears — not at manufacture and not at end of shelf life — and no strain designation appears for any of the three. Probiotic effects are strain-specific, so there is nothing here to look up.
What a probiotic is defined as
The definition NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements uses is the standard one: live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host.
Three requirements are packed into that sentence, and this label meets one of them on paper and none of them in a way you could check.
Live
The organisms have to be alive when you take them. A weight of powder is the same whether the culture in it is viable or not.
not stated
In adequate amounts
The amount that describes a live culture is colony-forming units. No CFU figure appears on this label in any form.
not stated
Conferring a benefit
Benefits are demonstrated strain by strain. Three species are named; no strain designation appears for any of them.
not checkable
Weight is the legal minimum
This is not a loophole the seller invented. ODS states it plainly: current regulations require only that the total weight of microorganisms be listed, not a viable CFU count. Manufacturers may add a CFU figure voluntarily. Many do. This one has not.
ODS goes further and tells buyers what to look for: prefer products that state CFU at the end of the product’s shelf life, not at the time of manufacture, because probiotics die during storage. That is the single most useful sentence anyone has written about buying a probiotic, and it asks for a figure this label does not carry in either form.
And one caution about CFU itself
ODS also notes that products with higher CFU counts are not necessarily more effective than products with lower ones. A count is not a score. It is the minimum information needed to compare this bottle with a trial, and without it no comparison is possible in either direction.
What 36 mg does let you work out
One thing, and it comes from the order the organisms are printed in.
The blend is a proprietary blend, and FDA’s labeling guide requires a proprietary blend to carry its total weight on its own line with the ingredients listed underneath in descending order of predominance by weight. The printed order is therefore quantitative.
B. infantisBifidobacterium infantis
C. butyricumClostridium butyricum
A. muciniphilaAkkermansia muciniphila
Those three ceilings are the whole of it. The split could be 34, 1 and 1; it could be 12, 12 and 12. Nothing printed on the bottle distinguishes between them — and milligrams of powder are not organisms in any case, which is what the missing colony-forming count would have told you.
That is the whole of what the blend line permits. It is worth having — the third organism cannot be more than a third of the blend — and it is a long way from a dose.
The three organisms
All three are real organisms with real literature. Two of them are unusual choices for a retail supplement, and the third is very unusual indeed.
- Bifidobacterium infantis
- A bifidobacterium of the infant gut, reclassified in 2008 as a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum. Widely used commercially, and always as a named strain in the literature.
- Clostridium butyricum
- A butyrate-producing organism used as a probiotic in Japan, where the MIYAIRI 588 strain has been in use for decades. The genus also contains species that are not benign, which is exactly why the strain matters.
- Akkermansia muciniphila
- A mucin-degrading organism of the gut lining and the newest of the three to reach the supplement market. In the EU only the pasteurised — that is, non-viable — form has been authorised, for adults, excluding pregnant and lactating women.
Every one of those literatures is indexed by strain. Clostridium butyricum MIYAIRI 588 has decades of use behind it; Clostridium butyricum as a bare species name does not, and the genus contains organisms nobody wants. That is exactly the situation ODS is describing when it says recommendations need to be strain-specific.
Akkermansia is worth a section of its own
Akkermansia muciniphila is the newest of the three to reach the supplement market, and it is the only one of them that a regulator has examined and written conditions for.
In February 2022 the European Commission authorised pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila as a novel food. Four conditions came with it, and each one is a thing this label does not have:
| What the EU authorisation requires | What this label gives |
|---|---|
| The pasteurised — that is, non-viable — form, designated as “pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila” on the label | the organism inside a blend headed “Probiotic”, which means live |
| A named strain (ATCC BAA-835, CIP 107961) | no strain designation |
| A maximum of 3.4 × 1010 cells a day | no cell count of any kind |
| Adults only, excluding pregnant and lactating women | a general caution to consult a physician |
Scroll this table sideways →
The honest caveat
EU regulations do not govern a product sold in the United States, and nothing here says this product is unlawful. It is not this site’s place to say so and it has no basis to.
What the authorisation is, is the most specific published statement anybody has made about this organism after examining the evidence. A regulator that looked at it authorised the dead form, for adults, not in pregnancy, at a stated count, under a named strain. That is worth knowing when you are holding a bottle that gives you none of the four.
What would change this page
Two lines of print. Neither requires a new study and both are things the manufacturer already knows.
- A colony-forming unit count per capsule, stated at the end of shelf life rather than at manufacture.
- A strain designation for each of the three organisms.
With those two, a reader could look each organism up against the trials it appears in, a clinician could answer a question about it, and the most interesting ingredient in this bottle would stop being the least checkable one.
What a count would have let you do
Four ordinary things, none of them possible without it.
- Compare this bottle with a trial. ODS lists study doses in colony-forming units — 1 to 2 × 1010 CFU a day in one place, at least 1010 in another. A milligram figure cannot be set beside any of them.
- Compare this bottle with the one next to it on the shelf. Competing products state counts. This one states a weight, so the two are not on the same axis.
- Tell a clinician what you are taking. “Thirty-six milligrams of a probiotic blend” is not an answer to the question they would ask.
- Know whether anything survived. A weight is the same whether the culture is alive or dead, which is the one thing that distinguishes a probiotic from a powder.
ODS adds a caution worth keeping beside all four: products with higher counts are not necessarily more effective than products with lower ones. A count is not a score. It is the minimum information needed to make any comparison at all, in either direction.
What this site will not do
Estimate a count from 36 mg. Freeze-dried cultures vary by orders of magnitude in cells per gram depending on the organism, the carrier and the process, and none of the three is stated here. Any figure would be a number invented to fill a hole, and the hole is the finding.
See the SlimTide packs
One, three or six bottles. The price is on the seller’s checkout page, because it is one of the few figures this site was never given — and a figure we were not given is not a figure we will print.
Shipping cost and delivery time were not supplied either, which matters more than usual on a product whose label asks for refrigeration. The guarantee is 60 days from purchase unless the sales page prints longer.
References
The sources behind the numbers on this page.
- Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of HealthProbiotics — Health Professional Fact Sheet · sourceThe definition of a probiotic, what colony-forming units are, the fact that US regulations require total microorganism weight rather than viable CFU, the advice to prefer products stating CFU at end of shelf life, strain specificity, and the safety record in immunocompromised people.
- European UnionCommission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/168 of 8 February 2022 authorising pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila as a novel food · sourceOnly the pasteurised form is authorised, for adults excluding pregnant and lactating women, at up to 3.4 × 10¹⁰ cells a day, under a named strain and a required designation.
- U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationDietary Supplement Labeling Guide, Chapter IV: Nutrition Labeling · sourceWhat a Supplement Facts panel must carry, and the proprietary-blend rule: the blend's total weight on its own line with the ingredients listed underneath in descending order of predominance by weight.