How to Read an Ayurvedic Supplement Label Without Getting Fooled
A 500 mg claim on one supplement bottle and a 500 mg claim on the bottle beside it can describe two completely different doses, and neither label is required to explain that to you.
By Jonathan Brooks
Most people read a supplement label the way they read the side of a granola bar box: a milligram number, maybe a percentage, and they move on. Ayurvedic supplements (formulated within Ayurveda, India's traditional medicine system) add a few more numbers that look precise and often go unexplained anywhere on the bottle. None of what follows is hidden information. It is just rarely spelled out in one place, so most people never learn to look for it.
The short version
An extract ratio like 12:1 tells you how much raw plant material went into the extract, not how strong the extract is.
A standardization percentage like our Curcumin's 95 percent curcuminoids tells you what share of the extract itself is the active compound, not the share of the whole capsule.
Serving size and capsule count are not the same thing. Read the "per day" line before you compare bottles.
A named blend that lists every herb but gives one combined weight is honest labeling, but still not the same as a per ingredient breakdown.
Total capsules divided by capsules per day tells you how long a bottle actually lasts, which is the fastest way to compare value between two products.
What an Extract Ratio Like 12:1 Is Actually Telling You
Ayurveda has always worked with concentrated herbal extracts, and modern labels inherited the shorthand without always inheriting the explanation. Triphala, the three fruit combination of Amalaki (a small sour fruit high in vitamin C), Haritaki (used in Ayurveda's classical texts for its cleansing quality), and Bibhitaki (the third fruit in the blend, prized for digestion), is the clearest example on our own shelf, because it is one of the products in our line where the extract ratio is printed plainly: a 12:1 extract, 250 mg per capsule, one capsule twice daily.
1. What the two numbers actually mean
It is a concentration statement, not a strength statement. Twelve pounds of Amalaki, Haritaki, and Bibhitaki went in, roughly one pound of extract came out, and that concentrated material is what fills the capsule.
A 12:1 ratio means twelve parts of raw dried fruit were reduced down to one part finished extract.
2. Why concentration is not the same claim as potency
A higher ratio number, a 20:1 instead of 12:1 for example, is not automatically stronger. It depends heavily on which compounds concentrate during that process and how the extraction was done. The ratio is honest information about how the extract was made, not a scoreboard where bigger numbers always win. Triphala's 12:1 is a well established ratio for this particular fruit blend, and printing it at all is more than a lot of labels bother to do.
Standardization Percentage: The Number That Tells You What Is Inside the Extract
Curcumin is where this gets confusing, because standardization percentage and extract ratio sound like the same idea and are not. Our Curcumin label reads: turmeric extract standardized to 95 percent curcuminoids at 485 mg, Ginger at 10 mg, and Black Pepper Extract at 5 mg, one capsule daily.
Ninety five percent standardized means curcuminoids make up 95 percent of the extract itself, not 95 percent of the finished capsule once the ginger, black pepper, and capsule shell are accounted for. A label that lists "500 mg turmeric" with no percentage attached could be raw ground root, which is a different product entirely from a 500 mg dose of a 95 percent curcuminoid extract. Ground turmeric root itself contains only a small fraction of curcuminoids by weight, often in the low single digits, so an unstandardized "turmeric" capsule and a standardized one are not really comparable products even at the same milligram count.
Black pepper is on that label for a reason older than any supplement company. In Ayurveda, turmeric is traditionally paired with warming herbs and often taken with a touch of fat or black pepper, and modern interest in piperine, the compound black pepper is known for, has mostly confirmed why that pairing stuck around rather than explaining it away.
Serving Size Versus Capsule Count
This is the easiest number to misread on any bottle, ours included, because the front of the label leads with capsule count and the actual dose is one line lower.
1. Do the daily math first
Read the "twice daily" line before you compare two bottles by their front panel number. Moringa Leaf Extract and Ashwagandha Root Extract (one of Ayurveda's most reached for adaptogenic roots) share the same pattern: 500 mg per capsule, one capsule twice daily. Our Curcumin and our Berberine are both taken once daily, so on those two the per capsule number and the daily total are already the same figure. Four products, two different relationships between the front panel number and the number that actually matters, and nothing on any of these bottles announces which pattern you are looking at.
Ashwagandha Root Extract is 500 mg per capsule, taken one capsule twice daily, which comes out to 1,000 mg a day, not 500.
2. Then do the bottle math
Once you know the daily dose, dividing total capsules by capsules per day tells you how long a bottle lasts, and this is where two bottles that look similarly priced can be very different value. A bottle taken once a day lasts twice as long as the same capsule count taken twice a day, which is obvious written down and almost never obvious standing in an aisle holding two boxes. Almost nothing in this category prints a "days supply" figure, so the division is yours to do, and the capsule count you should be dividing is the one on the bottle in your hand rather than a number you half remember from a website.
What "Proprietary Blend" Actually Means
A true proprietary blend lists a total weight for a combination of ingredients without breaking out how much of each ingredient is inside, and in its more aggressive form does not even name every ingredient by its common name. It is legal, it is common across the supplement industry generally, and it makes a label almost impossible to evaluate against a competitor's.
Our Melatonin formula is a useful comparison, because it is the opposite of a proprietary blend. The label breaks the formula out ingredient by ingredient: Melatonin at 10 mg, Indian Valerian, also called Tagar, at 200 mg, Ashwagandha at 200 mg, Bacopa, the herb Ayurveda knows as brahmi, a plant long paired with focus and calm, at 50 mg, and Holy Basil at 40 mg. That level of detail lets you see which ingredient is actually carrying the weight of the formula, which is precisely what a proprietary blend is designed to withhold.
Every ingredient is named. Nothing is hidden behind a trademarked blend name you would have to look up separately.
I will say plainly that I think a full breakdown like this one should be the floor for a five ingredient formula rather than something a brand gets credit for. A label that names every herb honestly but shares a single combined weight is still reasonable, and plenty of good products are labeled that way. A true proprietary blend that will not even tell you what is in it is a different problem, and it is the one worth walking away from.
A Two Minute Label Check
1. Does it name a ratio or a percentage, not just a milligram total
A number with no ratio or standardization attached is close to meaningless on its own.
2. Does the serving size match the capsule count on the front
One capsule on the label does not always mean one capsule a day. Read the dosing line before you compare two bottles by their front panel milligram number.
3. Is every ingredient named, even inside a combined weight
A blend that names its herbs and shares one total weight is honest labeling. A blend that hides ingredient names behind a proprietary name is not.
4. Divide capsule count by capsules per day
This is the number that actually tells you what a bottle is worth relative to another one, and almost no label calculates it for you.
Where Ojaska Fits
We built this line around the idea that a label should survive someone actually reading it closely, which is a lower bar than it sounds like and one a lot of the category still misses. Amalaki, Haritaki, and Bibhitaki at a 12:1 ratio. Turmeric standardized to 95 percent curcuminoids. Ashwagandha Root Extract at a dose that only makes sense once you read the twice daily line. A Melatonin formula that prints a weight beside every single ingredient rather than hiding behind a blend name.
None of that makes these products more powerful than anything else on a shelf. It just means the label is not the part working against you.
Honestly, the label questions in this piece are the ones that come up most at markets, usually from someone holding two bottles and trying to figure out which one is the better buy. The bottle math is the part people most often get backwards, and it is easy to divide by the wrong number on a first pass, so if it takes you two tries, that is normal. Most of the time the answer is on the bottle already. It is just printed smaller than the marketing above 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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