How to Spot a Fake or Underdosed Supplement

The Proprietary Blend Problem

A proprietary blend groups ingredients under a marketing name ("Endurance Matrix 6.2g" or "Anabolic Activation Complex 3.8g") and discloses only the total weight, not each ingredient's dose. The Australian Food Standards Code lets manufacturers of food-classified supplements stop there. Anything beyond the nutrition information panel is optional.

This is the single biggest label-reading hazard we see. A "Pump Matrix 4.7g" listing citrulline, arginine, and taurine could be 4g of taurine (cheap, oversupplied) padded out with 350mg each of the other two. Taurine at gram doses does very little for blood flow. Citrulline at 6g moves the needle on anaerobic performance^[2]. Without the individual numbers, you're guessing which product you actually bought.

Our rule: if a label uses proprietary blends without per-ingredient doses, we treat the entire formula as unverified. The ingredient list is marketing copy until proven otherwise.

Minimum Effective Doses, by the Numbers

Six compounds, six benchmarks. If a serve doesn't clear these, the science doesn't apply.

• Citrulline: at least 6g per serve as L-citrulline, or 8g as citrulline malate (2:1). This is the most commonly underdosed pre-workout ingredient in the Australian market. Many products sit at 2–3g, below the threshold for measurable performance benefit^[2].
• Beta-alanine: at least 3.2g per serve^[1]. The paraesthesia tingling is a free dose indicator. If you don't feel it, you're almost certainly under the carnosine-saturation threshold. 1–2g may produce a faint flush without delivering the endurance effect.
• Creatine monohydrate: 3g per serve minimum, with 5g as the standard effective dose^[4]. A pre-workout offering 1–2g of creatine is supplementing at sub-effective levels and counting on you not noticing.
• Caffeine: 150–300mg per serve for most adults^[3]. Under 100mg rarely produces meaningful ergogenic effects. Over 400mg adds side-effect risk without proportional benefit.
• Betaine anhydrous: at least 2.5g per serve. Betaine shows up on more Australian pre-workout labels each year, almost never at this dose.
• Ashwagandha (KSM-66 or Sensoril): 300–600mg per serve. Products listing 50–100mg are fairy-dusting. The ingredient is there for the label, not the effect.

The simple arithmetic test: add up the minimum effective doses for every active ingredient on the label. If that number exceeds the total blend weight, at least one ingredient is underdosed. Usually several.

Fairy Dusting: When the Label Is the Product

Fairy dusting is the practice of adding trace amounts of impressive-sounding ingredients so they appear on the label, while keeping the cost of goods near zero. The strategy works because most buyers scan ingredient names without checking doses. We've found it in roughly half of the premium-priced pre-workouts we've reviewed.

The usual suspects are exotic adaptogen extracts, patented trademarked ingredients dosed at a fraction of the clinical study amount, and amino acids listed at a tenth of the dose used in the research they're invoking. A nootropic blend listing "Lion's Mane Mushroom Extract 50mg" looks sophisticated. The cognitive-effect research uses 500–1000mg daily. At 50mg, the buyer is paying for ink on a label.

Our verdict: if a brand fairy-dusts one ingredient, assume they've done it to others. Use Examine.com to cross-check every active before you commit to a purchase. Two minutes per ingredient is enough to spot the trick.

The First-Ingredient Trap

Australian labelling rules require ingredients in descending order by weight, heaviest first. This is the most useful piece of information on a supplement label, and some manufacturers work hard to bury its implications.

For a protein powder, ingredient one should be a protein source: whey concentrate, whey isolate, pea, or similar. If the first ingredient is maltodextrin, sugar, or dextrose, the product is more carbohydrate than protein by weight. The per-serve protein number on the front of the tub is doing the heavy lifting through scoop-size inflation, not formulation.

For creatine, monohydrate should be first, second only to a tiny binder if anything. A "creatine complex" where creatine appears third or fourth, trailing bulking agents, is a warning sign. The fillers rarely add value. They almost always add price.

Serving-Size Manipulation

Serving size is whatever the manufacturer decides it is. There's no regulatory standard for "one serve" of protein or pre-workout, which creates an obvious lever for inflating headline numbers. A 40g serve showing 30g of protein and a 25g serve showing 20g read identically in marketing. The first uses 60% more powder per unit of protein.

We evaluate every product on the per-100g column, not per serve. A whey concentrate at 75g protein per 100g is directly comparable to any other whey concentrate, no matter what scoop the brand ships. For pre-workouts, divide caffeine and the other actives by the serving size to get concentration. 200mg caffeine in a 20g serve is denser than 250mg in a 40g serve, and that difference matters for stim-sensitive buyers.

SuppSaver's price metric normalises everything to $/100g for this reason. The serving-size variable gets removed from the cost comparison entirely.

Third-Party Testing and Batch Certification

Third-party programs independently verify that a product contains what the label claims. In Australia, HASTA (Human and Supplement Testing Australia) is the primary certification body for competitive athletes. Their stamp confirms a batch has been screened against the WADA prohibited substance list, which is the relevant test for anyone subject to drug testing.

For label-claim accuracy (does the tub actually contain the protein or creatine number printed on it?), look for Informed Sport or NSF Certified for Sport. Both include label-claim verification. Some brands publish a Certificate of Analysis per batch, an independent lab document showing measured nutrient content for that production run. A brand that won't share a CoA on request is telling you something about their internal quality controls.

Our verdict: certification adds 5–15% to the retail price. It's a positive signal when present and not damning when absent. Tested athletes and parents buying for teens should treat it as a hard requirement. Recreational buyers can weight it lower without making a bad call.

Online Resources for Dose Verification

Examine.com is the most thorough free database of supplement research we've found, with evidence summaries and dose ranges for hundreds of compounds. Two minutes per unfamiliar ingredient is enough to know what an honest label should show. We use it constantly when assessing new products.

BSCG (Banned Substances Control Group) publishes a list of certified products and the substances they test against, and their certification carries weight in professional sport. For tested athletes, the AIS ABCD classification^[5] is also worth bookmarking. Group A and B substances are the ones with evidence of benefit; everything else is buyer beware.

For Australian-specific pricing and protein or creatine concentration comparisons across multiple retailers, SuppSaver's per-100g normalisation strips the scoop-size game out of the cost calculation across every product in our database.

A Quick Label-Audit Checklist

Run any pre-workout or complex formula through this before paying:

• Are individual ingredient doses disclosed, or hidden inside a proprietary blend?
• Does the total serve weight allow every active to sit at its minimum effective dose at the same time?
• Is the primary ingredient listed first, or is filler (maltodextrin, taurine, sugar) leading the list?
• Is the caffeine dose disclosed clearly in milligrams?
• Is there third-party certification (HASTA, Informed Sport, NSF, BSCG)?
• Can you find a Certificate of Analysis on the brand's website or get one by request?
• Does the per-100g nutritional breakdown match what you'd expect for the product type?