Guide
How to read a weight supplement label without guessing
A method rather than an opinion. What each row of a Supplement Facts panel is for, what a proprietary blend gives up and what 21 CFR 101.36(c)(2) still lets you work out, why a ceiling is never an amount, and what standardisation means. Gelatine Sculpt is the worked example throughout.
By the Gelatine Sculpt Editorial Desk · Last updated September 24, 2026
The panel
Row by row
What a Supplement Facts panel is actually for
Six rows, each doing one job. The third decides whether a label can be checked at all.
| Row | What it is for | On this label |
|---|---|---|
| Serving size | The unit every other figure is per. | 1 ml, printed. |
| Servings per container | How many units the bottle holds. | 60, printed. The directions say 1 or 2 droppers; no dropper volume is given. |
| Amount per serving | A weight beside a name. The column that makes a label usable. | Filled once, for chromium. Absent for the other 22. |
| % Daily Value | How the amount compares with a reference intake. | 2% for chromium. A dagger on the blend: no Daily Value established. |
| The blend line | One weight covering a named group. | Proprietary Blend, 200 mg, 22 ingredients indented beneath. |
| Other ingredients | What carries the product rather than is it. | Printed in full, and the line an allergic reader checks first. |
Read down the right-hand column and the shape of this label appears. Two rows are filled properly, one is filled once out of 23, and one is a dagger pointing at a footnote. That is the difference between a document you can audit and one you take on trust.
The blend
The allowance
What a proprietary blend is, in the words of the regulation
A proprietary blend lets a manufacturer declare a group of ingredients as one combined weight instead of naming each amount. It exists so a formula can be published without its recipe. Two sentences of 21 CFR 101.36 do all the work.
21 CFR 101.36(c)(2), on how blend members must be listed
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 phrase that matters is descending order of predominance by weight. Heaviest first.
21 CFR 101.36(c)(3), on what the blend's number means
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'
So a blend figure is every member together, not the first one and not a typical one.
Putting the two sentences together
If the members are in descending order and weigh 200 mg in total, the ingredient in position n cannot weigh more than 200 divided by n milligrams: the n minus 1 above it are each at least as heavy, so n copies of its weight would fill the blend. Exact, and the only thing the arithmetic gives.
Here the line reads Proprietary Blend, 200 mg, with a dagger against it and 22 ingredients beneath. The only quantitative fact published about any one of them is where it sits in the list.
Ceilings
What the order lets you work out
A maximum for every member, and nothing else
Because the list must be heaviest first, position n cannot weigh more than the blend total divided by n. On a 200 mg blend: 200 mg for the first, 100 for the second, 66.7 for the third, 50 for the fourth, 9.1 for the twenty-second.
The rule of reading, in one sentence
A ceiling is the most an ingredient could possibly be. It is never the amount in the bottle. The real weight may be a fraction of it. Every figure of this kind on this site carries at most, no more than or cannot exceed in front of it.
Notice what the bound is worth at each end. For the first ingredient it is the whole blend, which rules out nothing. By the fourth it is 50 mg, a real constraint. By the last, 9.1 mg. The arithmetic is most useful where the marketing is quietest.
Standardisation
The missing conversion
Why an unstandardised extract cannot be compared with a trial dose
A standardised extract states how much of a marker compound it carries: so many milligrams standardised to a stated percentage of catechins, forskolin or capsaicinoids. Published doses are usually given for that marker, because the marker is what was measured.
No extract on this label is standardised to anything. That single absence closes off every remaining comparison. A ceiling of no more than 28.6 mg of green tea extract cannot be turned into a catechin figure, nor one of no more than 20 mg of capsicum into capsaicinoids, nor one of no more than 22.2 mg of coleus root into forskolin. The numbers exist on both sides with no bridge between them.
That is separate from the amounts question. Standardised extracts inside a blend would still hide the weights; published weights without standardisation would still block the conversion.
Checking
Five steps
How to check a claimed dose against a published one
The method in the order it gets used. It works on any bottle in this category.
Find the published dose in a source you can open
A government fact sheet or a paper with an identifier. If the only place a dose appears is the seller’s own material, it is a claim, not a source.
Write down the units and the period
Milligrams or micrograms, per serving or per day, over how many weeks. Most comparisons that look damning are unit errors.
Find the label’s figure, or work out its ceiling
If an amount is printed, use it. If it sits in a blend, divide the blend total by its position and mark the result a maximum.
Compare, and say which side is a ceiling
A ceiling against a trial dose is the weaker statement: the label cannot reach the dose, not that it falls short by a stated distance.
Check whether the extract is standardised
A dose for catechins or forskolin cannot be compared with a weight of unstandardised extract. If none is printed, the comparison stops.
| Ingredient | On this label | In the published trials | What to notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chromium picolinate | 0.7 mcg, printed | 200 to 1,000 mcg a day | The only printed amount on the label. |
| African mango seed extract | 50 mg or less (position 4) | 300 mg a day for 10 weeks | The trial dose is larger than the whole 200 mg blend. |
| Green tea leaf extract | 28.6 mg or less (position 7) | 141 to 1,207 mg of catechins | The ceiling is extract; the range is catechins, a fraction of it. |
| Coleus forskohlii root extract | 22.2 mg or less (position 9) | 500 mg standardised to 10% forskolin | And at that dose NIH reports no effect on body weight. |
| Capsicum annuum fruit extract | 20 mg or less (position 10) | 0.2 mg in a meal to 33 mg a day | The ceiling is fruit extract; the range is capsaicinoids alone. |
Run the method on the chromium row and it produces more than a gap. NIH’s chromium fact sheet gives the trial doses as “doses of chromium picolinate were 200 to 1,000 mcg/day”, against 0.7 mcg printed here. But the same fact sheet’s verdict on those trials reads: “Research suggests that supplementation with chromium, mainly in the form chromium picolinate, reduces body weight and body fat percentage to a very small, but statistically significant, extent. However, these effects have little clinical significance.” So the reading is not that a larger figure would have worked, and a method that only measured distance would have missed that.
The desk
Not label questions
Four things no panel will ever answer
A label is a regulatory document, not a customer service channel.
How many millilitres a dropper holds
The figure that decides whether a 60-serving bottle is 60 days or 30. Not on the label.
Which packs include which bonus guides
Cover artwork for five was supplied and nothing else. Contents, delivery and which packs carry them are all not published.
What shipping costs on a single bottle
Charged at checkout with no amount published in advance.
Whether a certificate of analysis exists for your lot
The references supplied are draft label values, and a reference string is not a document.
All four are answerable and none is answerable here. The order desk on +1 (925) 231-0148 is where they live, and the time to ask is before the card is charged. Where the label and the pack are both silent this site prints not published and lists the gap.
Run the method, then decide
If you have read this and still want to try it, three bottles is $59 each with free US shipping and 60 days to change your mind.
See the packs, from $49 a bottle
Order desk +1 (925) 231-0148 · opening hours not published
Questions
Gelatine Sculpt: common questions
What is the first thing to look at on a supplement label?
Is a proprietary blend a bad sign?
How do I work out a ceiling?
Why does standardisation matter so much?
Does this method prove a product does not work?
References
- National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. Chromium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Chromium-HealthProfessional/
- 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.