Gelatine Sculpt Blog
What a proprietary blend actually tells you, and what it does not
Twenty-two of the twenty-three substances on this label have no weight against their name. They sit inside a proprietary blend declared as one figure, 200 mg for all of them together, which 21 CFR 101.36(c) permits. The regulation that permits that also requires the blend to be listed heaviest first, so the ingredient in position n cannot weigh more than 200 divided by n milligrams. Those are ceilings. This post derives them and then spends as long on what they fail to tell you, including why the first ingredient’s ceiling rules out nothing at all.
By the Gelatine Sculpt Editorial Desk · Last updated September 24, 2026
A blend is a permission, not a secret
A proprietary blend is a permission. It lets a manufacturer publish a group of ingredients as one combined weight instead of a weight for each, so a formula can be declared without handing over the recipe. Legal, ordinary, and used once on this label.
The Gelatine Sculpt Supplement Facts panel names 23 substances. Chromium sits on a line of its own with 0.7 mcg against it and 2% of the Daily Value. Beneath that sits one line reading Proprietary Blend, 200 mg, with a dagger against it and 22 ingredients listed underneath carrying no figures at all. One amount, 23 names.
That is where most readers stop. What follows is what can still be done from there, failures of the method included.
- A blend is a permission, not a secret
- The two sentences that make a blend readable
- Working the ceilings out, step by step
- Twenty-two maximums, drawn to scale
The two sentences that make a blend readable
The rule
The regulation that permits the blend also constrains how it is printed, and that is the part nobody advertises. Two sentences do the work.
Dietary ingredients contained in the proprietary blend that are listed under paragraph (b)(3) of this section (i.e., 'other dietary ingredients') shall be declared in descending order of predominance by weight, in a column or linear fashion, and indented under the term 'Proprietary Blend' or other appropriately descriptive term or fanciful name.
The quantitative amount by weight specified for the proprietary blend shall be the total weight of all other dietary ingredients contained in the proprietary blend and shall be placed on the same line to the right of the term 'Proprietary Blend'
Read the first slowly. The order of those 22 names is not alphabetical and not a marketing sequence. It is required to be descending order of predominance by weight, so the top name is the heaviest thing in the blend and the bottom name the lightest. The second sentence fixes what the 200 mg means: every member together, not the first one and not a typical one.
Between them they turn an undisclosed list into something a reader can bound. Not measure. Bound.
Working the ceilings out, step by step
The derivation is three steps, and you can check each one.
One. The blend weighs 200 mg in total, covering every member together, and the members run heaviest first.
Two. Call a member’s position n. The n minus 1 members above it are each at least as heavy, so the first n together weigh at least n times whatever it weighs.
Three. Those n are part of a blend weighing 200 mg, so n times its weight cannot exceed 200. Divide by n: it cannot weigh more than 200 divided by n milligrams.
Worked on this panel: African mango is printed fourth, so at most 50 mg. Coleus forskohlii ninth, at most 22.2 mg. L-carnitine base last of 22, at most 9.1 mg. None is an estimate; each is the most that ingredient could be if the label is printed as required.
Twenty-two maximums, drawn to scale
Drawn out, the 22 ceilings make a staircase, each bar shorter than the one above it.
View as a table
| Rank | Ingredient | At most |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Maca (Lepidium mevenii) Root Extract | 200 mg or less |
| 02 | Grape (Vitis vinifera) Seed Extract | 100 mg or less |
| 03 | Guarana (Paullinia cupana) Seed Extract | 66.7 mg or less |
| 04 | African Mango (Irvingia gabonesis) Seed Extract | 50 mg or less |
| 05 | Eleutherococcus Senticosus Root Extract | 40 mg or less |
| 06 | Astragalus Root Extract | 33.3 mg or less |
| 07 | Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) Leaf Extract | 28.6 mg or less |
| 08 | Gymnema Leaf Extract | 25 mg or less |
| 09 | Coleus Forskohlii Root Extract | 22.2 mg or less |
| 10 | Capsicum Annuum Fruit Extract | 20 mg or less |
| 11 | Grapefruit (Citrus paradisi) Fruit Extract | 18.2 mg or less |
| 12 | Panax Ginseng Aerial Extract | 16.7 mg or less |
| 13 | Raspberry Ketones | 15.4 mg or less |
| 14 | L-Glutamine | 14.3 mg or less |
| 15 | L-Tyrosine | 13.3 mg or less |
| 16 | L-Arginine Base | 12.5 mg or less |
| 17 | Beta-Alanine | 11.8 mg or less |
| 18 | Monoammonium Glycyrrhizinate | 11.1 mg or less |
| 19 | GABA (Gamma amino butyric acid) | 10.5 mg or less |
| 20 | L-Ornithine HCL | 10 mg or less |
| 21 | L-Typtophan | 9.5 mg or less |
| 22 | L-Carnitine Base | 9.1 mg or less |
The bound is loose at the top and tight at the bottom, so the useful half of the chart is the half nobody puts in an advert.
What this post will not do
Turn a ceiling into an amount. Every figure here is a maximum derived from a published total and a published ordering rule, and the real weights are not published. An estimate in this space would read exactly like a measurement.
What the arithmetic does not tell you
The limits
Now the half that does not work, because a technique whose failures go unprinted is a sales pitch with arithmetic in it.
It says nothing about how much smaller the real amount is. The bound has a lid and no floor under it. African mango being at most 50 mg is equally consistent with 50 mg, with 5 mg and with a quantity too small to weigh. A 200 mg blend could be 199 mg of the first ingredient and a milligram between the other 21, and every bar on the ladder would still be true.
The ceilings cannot be added. They are individually true and jointly impossible, because each was worked out assuming everything above it was as light as it was allowed to be. A page that sums them has stopped doing arithmetic.
They cannot be converted into an active compound. No extract on this label is standardised to a marker compound, so no ceiling here can be converted into catechins, forskolin, capsaicinoids or glycyrrhizin. A ceiling of 28.6 mg of green tea extract is a weight of extract; published green tea doses are given in catechins.
Position one rules out nothing. Maca is printed first, so its ceiling is the whole 200 mg, which is the blend total said twice. Position two, at most 100 mg, is barely better. The bound only constrains anything from about the fourth name down, and maca is one of the 6 ingredients the seller’s graphic puts on screen, so the weakness is not hypothetical.
Where the bound is worth having
So where is the bound worth having? Where a published dose exists to hold it against, and where the position number is large enough for the division to bite. All four ingredients here with a published dose sit at position 4 or below. African mango, printed fourth, is at most 50 mg against a trial dose NIH gives as “150 mg IGOB131 or placebo 30-60 minutes before lunch and dinner (300 mg total daily dose) for 10 weeks” Coleus forskohlii, printed ninth, is at most 22.2 mg against “500 mg standardized for 10% forskolin”
And the comparison runs one way only, which is the single thing the arithmetic gives you for free. If a ceiling already falls below a studied dose, the real amount cannot rescue it, because it can only be smaller. The four comparisons are worked one at a time in the dose post, and the method as a procedure is on the label-reading guide.
None of this is an accusation. What a blend costs a reader is the amount column, the one that lets a name be checked against a published figure. If you buy, the label’s own instruction is this: Shake well before each use. Take 1 or 2 droppers full daily. Place in mouth and swallow.
A ceiling is the most an ingredient could possibly be. It is never the amount in the bottle, and the real weight may be a small fraction of it.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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Questions
Gelatine Sculpt: common questions
Does a proprietary blend mean the amounts are hidden?
Is a ceiling the amount in the bottle?
Can the 22 ceilings be added together?
References
- National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. Dietary Supplements for Weight Loss: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WeightLoss-HealthProfessional/
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. 21 CFR 101.36 - Nutrition labeling of dietary supplements. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-101/subpart-F/section-101.36
Every source above was opened and read on September 24, 2026. None of them tested Gelatine Sculpt itself. They describe the named ingredients and the product category, which is a different thing from testing this finished formula.
Keep reading
Next on this site
How to check a dose when the label never gave you one
Four ingredients here have a dose published by NIH. Each one run against this label's ceilings, including the one whose studied dose did nothing.
What not published means on a supplement label
Standardisation, caffeine totals, dropper volumes, dates and certificates: the absences on this label, and the check each one closes off for a reader.
How to read a label without guessing
The same method as a procedure rather than a worked example: the panel row by row, the blend, the bound, and the conversion that standardisation would allow.