Short answer: a proprietary blend lists several ingredients under a single combined weight, so you learn the total but never the amount of any individual ingredient. It is legal, it is common, and it makes it impossible to compare a product against the doses used in research.
What it looks like on a pack
You will see something like "Radiance Blend — 6,000 mg: marine collagen, hyaluronic acid, biotin, bamboo extract, grape seed". Six thousand milligrams sounds substantial. But that figure covers all five ingredients together. The collagen could be 5,800 mg of it, or it could be 200 mg. The label does not say, and it is not required to.
The one clue you do get
Ingredients within a blend are listed in descending order by weight. So the first ingredient is present in the largest amount. That tells you the ordering, and nothing about the gaps between positions. An ingredient listed fourth could be a hundredth of the one listed first.
This is why a common tactic is called "fairy dusting": include a trace of an impressive-sounding ingredient purely so it can appear on the label, while the bulk of the blend is an inexpensive filler.
Why brands use them
The stated reason is protecting a formulation from being copied by competitors. That reason is not nothing, but it is weaker than it sounds: a competitor with a budget can send a sample to a lab and reverse-engineer it. The more practical reason is usually cost — a blend lets a brand advertise a premium ingredient while including very little of it.
Why it matters to you
Supplement research is dose-dependent. A trial showing an outcome at 5,000 mg of collagen peptides says nothing about 500 mg. If a label will not tell you the dose, you cannot check it against any study, which means you cannot tell whether you are buying a functional product or an expensive flavour sachet.
How to read any label in thirty seconds
- Find the headline ingredient you are buying the product for.
- Look for a milligram figure directly next to that ingredient, not next to a blend name.
- If there is no individual figure, treat the amount as unknown.
- Compare the figure to the dose used in research for that ingredient.
Our position
NEXXGENE uses no proprietary blends. Every active ingredient and its exact dose is printed on the carton — 5,000 mg hydrolysed marine collagen peptides in Super Glow, 1,500 mg L-carnitine L-tartrate in Super Slim, and every co-ingredient declared individually. You should be able to check our claims against the research, and you should expect that of any brand you buy from.
