Descending Order By Weight

Supplement labels are not free-form. Ingredients inside a blend must be printed in descending order by weight, heaviest first. It is a small rule and it is the only quantitative signal a proprietary blend leaves behind.

What it tells you. On the GlycoAid label, Berberine is printed first and licorice root last. So berberine holds more of the 500 mg than anything else, and licorice holds the least. That is a real fact and it is worth having.

What it cannot tell you. The size of the gaps. First place could be 300 mg with thirteen items sharing the remainder, or it could be 45 mg with a fairly flat distribution behind it. Both labels look identical. Both are lawful.

Where the rule earns its keep. Use it as a consistency check on the advertising. If a product is sold on one hero ingredient and that ingredient is printed eleventh out of fourteen, the page and the label disagree, and the label is the one under legal obligation.

On this bottle the advertising and the ordering do line up: berberine is the name that carries the category and it leads the list. That is a point in the formula's favour and it is a small one, because it still says nothing about the amount.

A second, sneakier use. Look at where the cheap bulk ingredients sit. Rice flour and similar fillers belong in the other ingredients line, not inside the active blend. On this label they are where they should be, which is worth thirty seconds of checking on any bottle you pick up.

And the limit, again. Ordering is a ranking, not a measurement. Anybody converting a ranking into milligrams is inventing the difference.