If you read enough supplement websites you will notice two very different registers. Some pages promise you specific outcomes in confident language. Others describe what is in the product and stop.
That difference is not marketing skill. It is the law, and it is worth understanding as a buyer.
The basic rule
A food supplement may not claim to prevent, treat or cure any disease. That boundary is absolute. A supplement that treats a disease is a medicine, and medicines go through an entirely different licensing regime.
Authorised health claims
Beyond that, any claim that a product benefits health must appear on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register, and must be used in the authorised wording with its conditions met.
The register is specific. Creatine has an authorised claim about physical performance in successive bursts of short-term, high-intensity exercise — conditional on 3g a day. Various vitamins and minerals have authorised claims, conditional on the product providing a meaningful proportion of the Nutrient Reference Value.
Most botanicals have none at all. There are no authorised claims for shilajit, sea moss, lion's mane, ashwagandha, tongkat ali or fulvic acid.
That is why our pages for those products describe what the ingredient is and where it comes from, rather than what it will do for you. Not caution for its own sake — there is simply no permitted claim to make.
What is never allowed
Some categories are not permitted in any form, for any ingredient:
- Detoxifying or cleansing organs — the liver, the kidneys, the gut
- Altering or “alkalising” your body's pH
- Raising hormone levels, including testosterone
- Guaranteeing weight loss, muscle growth or sexual-health outcomes
- Being free of side effects, or completely safe
That last one deserves emphasis. No supplement can be described as having no adverse effects. A page telling you a product is entirely safe is making a claim it cannot support, and that should reduce your confidence in everything else on it.
How to read a page that ignores this
Confident promises are not a sign that a seller believes in their product more than we believe in ours. They are a sign that a seller is either unaware of the rules or has decided to ignore them — and neither inspires confidence about what is in the capsule.
Where this leaves us
It means our product pages are less exciting than some. What we can tell you is what is in the product, how much of it, where it came from, how to take it, and who should not. Where we do not have a figure confirmed, we would rather say so than estimate it.
If something you need is missing from one of our pages, email us and ask.