Method
The bigger number that delivers less
Two numbers sit on a standardised ingredient row: a weight in milligrams and a percentage. Readers look at the first. The second is the one that decides what is in the capsule. This piece works that through on two rows of one panel, where the arithmetic happens to run against the label.
A standardisation percentage beats a milligram figure, and this panel proves it twice. Pygeum is printed at 200 mg standardised to 3% phytosterols, so the serving delivers 200 × 0.03 = 6 mg. The clinical standard is a 13% extract at about 100 mg a day, which is 13 mg. The bigger printed number delivers under half. Lycopene 5% of 10 mg is 0.5 mg.
- Pygeum, as printed
- 200 mg
- Standardised to
- 3% phytosterols
- Phytosterols delivered
- 6 mg
- The trial standardisation
- 13% at about 100 mg a day
- Sterols in that dose
- 13 mg
- Lycopene, as printed
- 10 mg at 5%
- Lycopene delivered
- 0.5 mg
- Rows printing a percentage
- 2 of 9
Two numbers on one row, and which one counts
Start with what a botanical extract is, because the rest follows from it. A plant is harvested, a part of it is taken, and a solvent pulls some compounds out and leaves others behind. What comes out is a powder, and the powder is mostly not the compound anyone has studied. It is plant material, with the studied compound somewhere inside it at some concentration.
A standardisation is a supplier's statement of that concentration. “Standardised to three per cent phytosterols” means that three hundredths of the weight in the capsule is the measured compound and ninety-seven hundredths is everything else. The percentage is not a quality mark and not a guarantee of effect. It is a scale factor, and without it a weight on a label cannot be converted into anything at all.
So a standardised row carries one fact in two parts. Take either part away and the row stops meaning anything. Take away the percentage and a reader has the weight of a bag whose contents are unstated. Take away the weight and they have a concentration with nothing to apply it to. Printed together, they multiply, and the product is the only figure that can be set beside a published dose.
The sentence this whole piece turns on
A milligram figure is the weight of the material. A standardisation percentage is how much of that material is the thing that was studied. Only their product is a dose. Which is why the bigger printed number can, and here does, deliver less.
This matters more than it sounds, because milligram figures are what marketing is built from. A bigger weight on a panel reads as more product for the money, and on an unstandardised row that reading is at least arguable. On a standardised row it can be flatly wrong, and the next two sections are the worked proof.
The pygeum row, worked in full
The panel prints Pygeum africanum Extract (bark) (std. to 3% phytosterols) 200 mg. Everything needed is on the row: the species, the plant part, the weight and the standardisation. By the standards of this category that is a well-drafted line, and it is the line that makes the following paragraph possible.
The phytosterols are the measured constituent — the compounds the published work on pygeum reports and compares. So the serving delivers 200 × 0.03 = 6 mg of them. That is the whole of the arithmetic, and both of its inputs are printed on the label.
Now the comparison. The clinical literature on pygeum does not use a three per cent extract. It uses one standardised to 13% total sterols, at around 100 mg a day, often as 50 mg twice daily. One hundred milligrams at 13% is 100 × 0.13 = 13 mg of sterols.
| This product | The clinical standard | |
|---|---|---|
| Extract weight printed | 200 mg | about 100 mg a day |
| Standardisation printed | 3% phytosterols | 13% total sterols |
| The multiplication | 200 × 0.03 | 100 × 0.13 |
| Sterols delivered | 6 mg | 13 mg |
| Which weight looks larger | This one, by a factor of two | — |
| Which delivers more sterol | — | This one, by about 2.2 times |
Read the last two rows together, because that is the finding. This product prints twice the milligram figure of the trial dose and delivers 6 mg against 13 mg of the measured constituent, which is 6 ÷ 13 = roughly 46% of it. Doubling the weight while cutting the strength to under a quarter leaves a reader with under half as much of the compound, on a label that looks twice as generous.
One qualification, printed in the same breath. Nothing here says the pygeum is weak, adulterated or badly made. A three per cent extract is a real material that a supplier can make honestly and a label can declare correctly, which is exactly what has happened. The finding is narrower: at this strength, this weight does not reach the quantity the published work used, and a reader who compared weights would have concluded the opposite. The full entry for this row, with the source for the thirteen per cent figure, is on the ingredients page.
The lycopene row, and the grocery shelf
The second proof is shorter and the gap is wider. The panel prints Lycopene 5% (Lycopersicum esculentum) (tomato) 10 mg. The order of the words is the whole row: the 5% is the standardisation of the preparation, and the 10 mg is the weight of that preparation. So the lycopene is 10 × 0.05 = 0.5 mg.
Half a milligram. Against the published work, that is about a 30th of the 15 mg a day for 6 months given to 40 men in the trial most often cited for lycopene and benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Against food, the gap stops being a comparison and becomes a scale. USDA publishes lycopene content per household measure: 21.96 mg in one cup of canned tomato juice and 54.39 mg in one cup of canned tomato puree. A day of this product carries about a 44th of the cup of juice and about a 109th of the cup of puree.
The two USDA figures are published per household measure and are quoted exactly. The trial figure is the 15 mg a day given for six months in the commonly cited BPH study. The fresh tomato is an approximation and is labelled as one; the other four are not. A day of this product supplies about a forty-fourth of the lycopene in a cup of tomato juice.
The bar for this product is the short one at the top, and the chart is logarithmic, which means the visible gap is smaller than the real one. Note which of the five bars are printed figures: the product, the trial and the two USDA measures are all published numbers, and only the fresh tomato is an approximation, which is why it is labelled as one.
This row, like the pygeum row, is drafted correctly. The species is named, the part is named, and the percentage sits where it belongs. A reader who multiplies gets the right answer in two seconds. A reader who does not will carry away “ten milligrams of lycopene”, which is twenty times what is there.
Both rows on one line
Set the two standardised rows side by side and the shape of the thing is easier to hold. Each line below has four published figures and one derived one, and the derived one is the product of the two before it.
| Row, as printed | Weight | Standardisation | Constituent delivered | The published figure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pygeum africanum Extract (bark) | 200 mg | 3% phytosterols | 6 mg | 13 mg, from 100 mg of a 13% extract |
| Lycopene 5% (tomato) | 10 mg | 5% lycopene | 0.5 mg | 15 mg in the trial; 21.96 mg in a cup of tomato juice (USDA) |
The two rows fail in opposite directions, which is worth noticing. The pygeum row is the larger of the two weights on the panel after saw palmetto, and its shortfall is modest — under half the trial constituent, not a hundredth of it. The lycopene row is the smallest weight on the panel and its shortfall is enormous. Neither could be guessed from the printed weights; both fall out of one multiplication each.
The wider picture, including the two rows where the correction is a plant part and a nutrient form rather than a percentage, is set out on the page that transcribes the whole panel and numbers every finding on it.
The only reason either sum is possible
Here is the part of this piece that matters most, and it runs the other way from everything above it. Both calculations exist for exactly one reason: this label prints the percentages. Remove the two figures 3% and 5% from the panel and the preceding four sections collapse into nothing. There would be no shortfall to report, because there would be no way to measure one.
Think about what that means for a reader comparing bottles. A product that discloses its standardisation can be checked, and a check sometimes comes back badly. A product that discloses nothing cannot be checked at all, and comes back neither badly nor well. The second product looks better on a shelf. It is not better; it is quieter, and quiet is not a result.
This is not an abstraction, because the same panel contains the counter-example. Of the nine rows, two print a standardisation and seven do not. The largest botanical on the label is saw palmetto at 300 mg, and that row prints no standardisation whatever. Trial extracts of saw palmetto are lipidosterolic preparations standardised to a stated fatty-acid content; this row could be any of several materials, and no arithmetic of the kind done above can be performed on it. The row this piece can say least about is the biggest one.
What the printed percentage buys the reader
- A convertible figure. The weight becomes a quantity of a named compound, in one multiplication, with no outside information needed.
- A comparison with the literature. A trial dose can be converted the same way and the two products compared.
- A comparison between brands. Two bottles printing percentages can be ranked on constituent rather than on weight.
- A question for a pharmacist that has an answer. “Six milligrams of phytosterols” is a figure somebody can work with.
- Falsifiability. A printed percentage is a claim a laboratory could test. That is what makes it worth more than an adjective.
What a silent row leaves behind
- A weight and nothing else. The material in the capsule is unquantified in every sense that matters.
- No comparison with the literature. The published dose is a different kind of number and the two cannot be put on one axis.
- No comparison between brands. Two unstandardised rows at the same weight may differ by any factor at all.
- A question with no answer. “Three hundred milligrams of saw palmetto extract” does not tell a clinician what is in the capsule.
- Nothing to be wrong about. A row that makes no measurable claim cannot be caught out, and that is not the same as being correct.
Credit, stated plainly, because a page that only subtracts is less useful than one that keeps score. Nine rows, nine printed amounts, no proprietary blend, species and plant parts named, and two rows standardised. That is the most transparent label in this series, and it is the reason this piece could be written about it at all.
What a quieter label would have looked like
It is worth imagining the alternative in detail, because the imagined label is the one most buyers have actually been handed.
Suppose the row read Pygeum africanum Extract 200 mg and stopped. No bark, no percentage. A reader comparing it with a trial that used 100 mg a day would see twice the dose and move on satisfied. The product would be identical: same powder, same 6 mg of phytosterols, same capsule. Only the reader's conclusion would change, and it would change in the seller's favour.
Or suppose the lycopene row read Lycopene 10 mg. That reads as two thirds of the trial dose, which sounds like the same ballpark. The real figure is about a 30th of it. Deleting two characters from a label turns a thirtyfold gap into an apparently reasonable one, and the deletion would be perfectly legal, because no rule compels a standardisation figure.
The uncomfortable consequence, said once and clearly
Disclosure is penalised. The labels that print their percentages are the ones that can be shown to fall short, and the labels that print nothing look unimpeachable. Any reader who rewards the quiet one has the incentive exactly backwards. The correct response to a printed percentage that comes back badly is to ask the next brand for theirs — not to prefer the brand that would not say.
There is a practical version of that. When two bottles sit side by side and only one prints standardisations, the honest comparison is not between the two products. It is between one product and one unknown. The standing guide to reading a botanical ingredient name sets out the five rungs a row can reach, from a common name up to a named constituent with a percentage beside it.
What the arithmetic does not say
Four limits, because a figure quoted past its limits stops being useful.
- It is not a safety finding. Nothing in either sum concerns a limit, a dose ceiling or an interaction. Delivering less of a constituent than a trial used is the opposite of a safety concern.
- It is not a measurement. No bottle was opened and no certificate of analysis was supplied. Both figures are multiplications of the merchant's own printed numbers, and they stand or fall with the accuracy of the panel.
- It is not a verdict on the product. A shortfall against a published dose is a statement about a comparison, not a prediction about a person. Trials report averages; this piece reports arithmetic.
- It does not transfer to the unstandardised rows. Saw palmetto, grape seed and pumpkin seed cannot be converted at all, so nothing above applies to them in either direction.
There is a fifth limit worth a sentence of its own. In the saw palmetto case the published work is negative: the CAMUS trial randomised 369 men, escalated from 320 mg to 960 mg a day over 72 weeks, and found no difference from placebo at any dose. Matching a trial dose is therefore not automatically a good thing, and falling short of one is not automatically a bad thing. The reason to do the arithmetic is to know which conversation you are in.
One row on this panel is corrected the same way without any percentage in it at all. The nettle row prints 50 mg of leaf against the 360 mg of root the prostate literature uses. It is the same kind of mistake a reader makes comparing weights across different strengths, and the category guide sets out the published doses for each ingredient in turn.
What to look for on any label
Seven habits, written to be run on any bottle rather than on this one. The first two take about four seconds each and will do most of the work.
- 01Read the percentage before you read the milligramsThe two figures on the row are not two facts. They are one fact and its scale: the milligrams are the weight of the material, the percentage is how much of that material is the studied compound. Reading the weight alone is reading the packaging.
- 02Do the multiplication, in your head, on the spotMove the decimal point and you are done. Three per cent of 200 is 6. Five per cent of 10 is 0.5. Thirteen per cent of 100 is 13. No calculator, no reference book and no expertise is needed, which is why this is the single most useful habit a label reader can pick up.
- 03Check which constituent the percentage namesStandardised to 3% phytosterols and standardised to 3% of something else are different claims about the same weight. The named compound is the one the published work measured. A percentage with no compound attached is decoration.
- 04Read the plant part on the same lineA percentage can be perfectly honest and still be uncomparable, because a constituent from one part of a plant is not evidence about another part. The part is one word on the line and it decides whether any published figure applies at all.
- 05Find the standardisation the literature used, not just the doseA trial dose is two numbers as well: a weight and a strength. Quoting the weight alone is how a 100 mg trial comes to look smaller than a 200 mg product. Look for the percentage in the trial description, and compare the products of the two multiplications.
- 06Treat a missing percentage as a missing figure, not as a zero and not as a passWhere no standardisation is printed, the row cannot be converted into anything, and that is all you know. It does not follow that the material is weak, or that it is fine. It follows that the row cannot be placed beside a published dose at any confidence.
- 07Write the product of the sum beside the row, and keep itSix milligrams. Half a milligram. Thirteen milligrams. Those are the figures to carry to a pharmacist, not the printed weights. A derived figure kept beside its sum is checkable; one quoted on its own becomes a rumour.
If only one of the seven survives the trip to the shop, make it the second. Multiply, do not admire. Three per cent of two hundred is six. Five per cent of ten is a half. The two figures on the row are not two reasons to be impressed; they are a sum, and the sum takes less time than reading the front of the bottle.
And when the percentage is absent, say so in those words rather than filling the gap. Not published is a finding. It is not a zero, it is not a range, and it is not a reason to assume the worst — it is a reason to put the bottle beside one that tells you, and to ask the seller for the figure in writing before you buy either. The companion piece in this journal does the same job on the two upper limits for vitamin B6, where two expert bodies read one literature and landed in different places.
Questions people type about this
Six queries that bring readers to this subject, answered off the panel and the cited sources and nothing else.
pygeum 13 percent sterols dose
The clinical literature on pygeum uses an extract standardised to 13% total sterols, at around 100 mg a day or 50 mg twice daily. One hundred milligrams at 13% is 13 mg of sterols. This product prints 200 mg standardised to 3%, which is 6 mg — roughly 46% of the trial figure, from twice the printed weight.
what is lycopene 5 percent 10 mg
It means ten milligrams of a preparation that is five per cent lycopene. The lycopene itself is 10 × 0.05 = 0.5 mg. The percentage is the standardisation of the extract and not a share of anything else on the panel, and the order of the words on the row is correct. A hurried reader will take the row to say ten milligrams of lycopene. It does not.
prostacyl lycopene amount
The panel prints Lycopene 5% (Lycopersicum esculentum) (tomato) 10 mg. The delivered lycopene is 0.5 mg a serving. The commonly cited BPH trial gave 15 mg a day for 6 months to 40 men, so this is about a 30th of that dose, and USDA puts one cup of canned tomato juice at 21.96 mg.
how much lycopene per day prostate
This desk does not publish a recommended intake, because no body it cites publishes one. What can be reported is what the work used: 15 mg a day for 6 months in the trial most often quoted, against USDA food figures of 21.96 mg for a cup of canned tomato juice and 54.39 mg for a cup of canned tomato puree. Those are the published figures, not advice.
Is a product with a printed percentage worse than one without?
No, and that is the point this piece is built on. A percentage is what makes a shortfall visible, so a label that prints one can be caught out and a label that does not cannot. The row that cannot be checked at all on this very panel is the largest botanical on it, saw palmetto at 300 mg, with no standardisation printed.
Does a bigger milligram figure ever mean more of the active compound?
Often, yes — where both labels print the same standardisation, or where neither material is an extract. The trap is comparing a weight against a weight when the strengths differ, and only the multiplication tells you which is larger.
References
Four sources carry this piece, all opened and read: the FDA labeling guide for what a Supplement Facts panel has to carry, the pygeum monograph for the thirteen per cent standardisation and the dose the literature uses, the report of the lycopene trial for its fifteen milligrams a day, and USDA's own tables for the lycopene content of tomato products per household measure.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2026). Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV, Nutrition Labeling (21 CFR 101.36).
- PeaceHealth / Natural Medicines monograph (2026). Pygeum: dosage, standardisation to 13% total sterols, and evidence rating.
- FoodNavigator, reporting Schwarz et al., Journal of Nutrition 138:49-53 (2008). Lycopene 15 mg a day for six months in 40 men with BPH.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library (2026). Lycopene content of tomato products, per household measure.
None of the four was written about this product and none mentions it. They are cited for what a label must carry and for the published figures the panel is being set against, which is the only thing a monograph, a trial report or a food table can be cited for. The two multiplications need no citation at all: both inputs are printed on the label, and the working is on this page.
Read the panel before you decide
Sixty capsules, two a day, thirty days a bottle. The Supplement Facts panel declares nine ingredients and nine amounts, with no proprietary blend — the most transparent label in this series. Four of those nine rows change meaning once the arithmetic is done, and all four sums are shown in full. One bottle is $69; six are $49 each. The refund window is printed as 60 days in one place and 90 in another.
- 60 or 90 days — the page prints both
- Nine ingredients, nine printed amounts, no blend
- Returns to 1370 Avenue of the Americas, Floor 4, New York, NY 10019, USA
Prices as printed on the sales page, as of October 12, 2026: one bottle $69, six bottles $49 each with free shipping. The three-bottle total is not published, so it is left blank rather than estimated. The refund window is printed as 60 days in one place and 90 in another — confirm it at the checkout. Questions first? Every published contact route is here.
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Authorship and review
Who wrote and checked this page
What this page was checked against
- The label artwork, read at 2× and transcribed character for character. Where the label and the marketing disagree, the label is printed.
- The seller pack, quoted rather than paraphrased, and identified as marketing wherever it is used.
- The published sources listed in the references on this page. Every one was opened and read; none is cited from memory.
- The arithmetic, shown in full. Every amount on this panel is printed, so the figures here are conversions of printed amounts with the working given, never ceilings and never estimates.
- Nothing else. Any fact that was not supplied is recorded as not published rather than filled in.
Last updated October 12, 2026. A highlighted slot is a value no human has supplied yet. Who reviews these pages?