A customer once turned a tub round in her hands at my kitchen table and read the back of it out loud to me, slowly, like a train timetable in a language she half knew. Percentages, milligrams, a column of names in brackets. Then she looked up and said: “Is that good?”
Honestly, that is the right question and almost nobody can answer it from the label alone. So here is how I read one, in the order I actually read it — and where the numbers stop being able to help you.
Start at the serving size, not the big print
Everything else on that panel hangs off this one line, and it is usually the smallest text on the box. Two capsules, one scoop, one sachet — whatever it says, every figure underneath is per that. Two products can look wildly different on paper and be near identical once you notice one is quoting per two tablets and the other per four.
The other version of this trick is per 100 g. A powder that lists everything per 100 g is not lying to you, but you are almost certainly not eating 100 g of it, so those numbers need dividing before they mean anything. I always find the serving line first and read the rest through it.
%NRV is a comparison, not a target for you personally
The percentage column on a UK label is the Nutrient Reference Value — a single reference figure used so that every product on the shelf can be measured against the same yardstick. It is genuinely useful for that. What it is not is a number calculated for you.
It does not know your age, whether you eat fish, whether you have been vegan for years, or whether breakfast happens at all on a working morning. It is one line drawn through a whole population. So when someone shows me a label with a very high percentage on it and asks whether that is good, my honest answer is: good compared to what? A high figure for something you already get plenty of is not an achievement.
Longer lists and bigger numbers are not automatically better
This is where I push back gently. The instinct is that thirty ingredients beats fifteen, and that a large number beats a small one. Neither holds up. What matters more is whether the list is pointed at anything — whether those particular nutrients are there for a reason connected to you, or whether they are there because they look impressive in a column.
Which is roughly why I ended up recommending Bioniq GO to people who arrive at the shop already exhausted by labels. The list is decided before the thing is made rather than after: you take the free Wellness Assessment, your answers about your age, how you actually eat and what you are trying to support are matched to one of 40 formulas, and what arrives holds up to 23 science-backed nutrients in one daily dose of premium Swiss granules. No blood test, no pills to swallow, and it is vegan-friendly. I go further into what that phrase “science-backed” is doing in what ‘science-backed ingredients’ really means in Bioniq GO.
A quick checklist for the next label you pick up
- Serving size first. Then re-read every number as “per that”.
- Check what it is per. Per sachet, per two tablets, per 100 g — they are not comparable until you make them comparable.
- Treat %NRV as a shared yardstick, not a personal instruction.
- Ask what the list is aimed at. Everyday energy and focus, an active lifestyle, normal skin, hair and nails, long-term wellbeing — a list with a target tells you more than a long one.
- Remember what it sits beside. Food supplements are not a substitute for a varied, balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
If you would rather shop by goal than by decoding panels, our targeted nutrition range is organised that way on purpose. And if the label reading has simply worn you out, it is worth ten quiet minutes to build your personalised formula and let the answers do the sorting instead of the small print. Bioniq was founded in London in 2019, and its personalised nutrition business is now part of Herbalife — which is how it came to sit alongside everything else on my shelves.
