Decoding the Label part 2: What's really inside your foods and supplements?

IMPORTANT LINK TO LABELS!

https://www.savorthescience.com/blog

In this episode, we roll up our sleeves and dive even deeper into the world of food and supplement labels—using a few “totally real, definitely not made-up” products I’ve created just for this breakdown. You’ll learn how a tiny bit of simple math (promise, it won’t hurt!) can reveal exactly how much of each ingredient is actually in your products… and how brands strategically design their labels to make you feel good about what you’re buying, even when the reality is a little less shiny.

We’ll peel back the curtain on ingredient order, proprietary blends, clever wording, and why some labels look clean at first glance but tell a very different story underneath. By the end, you’ll be able to spot red flags, decode what’s really inside, and shop like a pro—no calculator anxiety required.

References:

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/consumers-misremember-products-scientifically-studied-claims#:~:text=Key%20takeaways%20*%20A%20new%20study%20finds,was%20roughly%20the%20same%20among%20both%20groups.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6340779/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nutrition-facts-labels-often-ignored-whats-the-fix/

https://www.cdc.gov/folic-acid/data-research/mthfr/index.html

https://www.dietvsdisease.org/mthfr-folic-acid-folate/

Chapters

• 1:23 The fake supplement label and how to ID where vitamins & minerals come from
• 5:49 Sources of folate & MTHFR mutations
• 7:31 Are minerals natural or can they be synthetically produced?
• 10:25 Deep diving into protein and fiber sources
• 15:25 Extracts, extract ratios and how to find what's not there
• 17:46 Back to finding protein and how to know how much comes from each source
• 20:15 TRIGGER WARNING - MATH. How to calculate how much of any 1 ingredient is in a product without it being specifically declared
• 25:02 Fiber calculations and sources of fiber with a tangent about emulsifiers
• 27:20 Halo ingredient, fairy dust or clinically proven benefits?
• 32:15 What about probiotics? How do you know if they work?
• 36:19 Let's look at the fake food label
• 39:44 How to read ingredients lists and how ambiguous regulations make it hard to distinguish real from fairy dust
• 49:10 TRIGGER WARNING MATH! How to quantify the amounts of vitamins and minerals in a blend
• 52:39 Vitamin D forms a how they differ
• 55:52 Why would a company use fairy dust amounts of ingredients?
• 59:36 So what does this fake food product actually provide?
• 1:00:59 Final take aways