Somebody stood in my kitchen last autumn holding two boxes, one in each hand, and asked me which one was stronger. Both said something about immune support on the front. Both had a long list on the back. The honest answer — that the phrase on the front tells you almost nothing about which box is better — was not what they were hoping for, so we turned the boxes over and read them properly instead.
That is really what this piece is. Not a list of what to buy, but a short course in reading the words, because “immune support” is one of the most misunderstood phrases in the whole category. People assume it is marketing fluff. It is not. It is a regulated phrase with a fairly narrow meaning, and once you know what that meaning is, the back of the box becomes considerably easier to judge.
The phrase is narrower than it sounds
Here is the part that surprises most people: in the UK, a supplement cannot simply claim whatever it fancies about the immune system. The wording that is permitted is close to “contributes to the normal function of the immune system”, and every word in it is doing work.
Contributes — it plays a part alongside everything else you eat. Normal — it is about a system already doing its job, not about pushing it somewhere beyond that. And the claim is attached to a specific nutrient at a specific amount, not to the product as a whole. So when a front-of-pack says “immune support”, what it is really saying is: there is a nutrient in here, at a meaningful amount, with a recognised role in that system. That is a genuine statement. It is just a far more modest one than the packaging design usually implies.
What to read, in order
When someone sends me a photo of a label and asks what I think, I look at four things, roughly in this order:
- Which nutrient the claim belongs to. Vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc and selenium all have recognised roles here. A product can carry the phrase on the strength of one of them. Find out which.
- The amount, next to the %NRV. The percentage is the useful number — it tells you where the dose sits relative to a reference intake rather than leaving you to judge whether 15 mg is a lot.
- Whether the claim is about the product or about a botanical on the front. Herbal names on the packaging are often there for flavour and tradition, not because they carry the claim.
- What else is in it. If you already take three other things, the overlap matters more than the headline.
I have gone into the numbers side of this in more detail in my piece on reading a supplement label and what the numbers really mean, so I will not repeat the arithmetic here. The short version: the back of the box is the honest part.
The overlap problem nobody plans for
This is where the two-boxes-in-the-kitchen situation usually ends up. Somebody buys a targeted product in October, keeps taking their existing multivitamin, adds a vitamin D in January because the mornings are dark, and by spring has four tubs with substantial overlap between them and no clear idea of what the daily total actually is. Nothing has gone wrong exactly. It has just stopped being a plan.
The appeal of a single daily formula is largely that this cannot happen. With Bioniq GO, you answer a free Wellness Assessment — no blood test needed — and you are matched to one of 40 formulas, with up to 23 science-backed nutrients in one daily dose of Swiss granules. One sachet, one set of amounts, one thing to read. Bioniq was founded in London in 2019, and its personalised nutrition business is now part of Herbalife.
Personalised does not mean stronger
I want to be careful here, because this is exactly where expectations drift. A personalised formula is not a more powerful version of the same thing. What it changes is the fit — the amounts are set against your answers rather than against an average shopper, which is a different and more useful kind of advantage than a bigger number on the front of a box.
It also sits alongside food rather than replacing it. If you are after something more specific for a particular goal, our Targeted Nutrition range is there for that, and the two approaches coexist perfectly well as long as you know what is in both. Food supplements are not a substitute for a varied, balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
So: next time a front-of-pack promises you something, turn it over. And if what you find is four tubs saying roughly the same thing, it may be worth ten minutes to take the free Wellness Assessment and see what a single daily formula would look like for you. You can build your personalised formula here — and as ever, message me if you would rather talk it through first.
