Why not include a scoop inside powder supplements?

Scoops are not accurate forms of measurement, and we feel including them promotes the idea that you don't need a scale. That cannot be further from the truth. Accuracy matters. Safety matters. A two cent plastic scoop from China should not be what our customers rely on to accurately measure their powders. Densities vary based on milling size, which can drastically affect how much powder you get. A scoop of one powder milled to 80 mesh will be totally different than even the same product milled to 200 mesh. Even in the same batch, one scoop to the next can vary wildly. If you are shooting for 10mg, you might get anywhere from 5mg to 20mg without noticing. Are all the particles you scooped even dispersed? Is there an air pocket? Was it a flat scoop or was the pile heaping? These are all variables that can throw off how much a scoop is giving you. If you are taking protein powder or creatine, then a scoop might be fine; since it doesn't really matter if you get 6 grams instead of 5 grams. However, it matters a lot for the powders that are dosed in the milligram range.

We have gotten a LOT of flak for this over the years, and yes we have lost customers over it. However, I have stood firm on it since day one. Nobody should be dosing their nootropic powders with scoops. We are in the process of writing a blog showing people just how inaccurate and variable scoops can be. I think people are going to be very surprised when they read our blog. The variability and inaccuracy is a LOT more than most consumers realize. When you are dosing products for a specific effect, the amount you take matters. It's not a 15% variability. It's 100% in some cases. There are literally cases where people were taking double than they thought because they were using a scoop. We have dealt with it on the support side for years. When we finally get them using a scale, they realize just how off their dosing has been. Pair that with people not controlling their methods well each time, and you will get some days with huge overdoses and others where you undershoot. You see this a LOT on the phenibut side. Almost every single person that reports variability in effects between batches is just scooping the damn powder with a random spoon. Controlling a simple variable such as weight of your dose is crucial to having anecdotes online be anywhere near useful. There is no way we are going to promote inaccurate dosing methods. We care about our customers too much to take the easy road, and just appease everyone with scoops that they think are "good enough," but are actually not.

The only way I will say that scoops can be used properly is when they are calibrated to that specific batch of that specific powder with a scale. So if you had a nice set of stainless steel measuring scoops, and you calibrated them to that batch of powder with a scale, then you could use the scoop to get somewhat accurate doses for the rest of that batch. However, you would have to calibrate it every batch. Don't just assume the next jar will be the exact same milling size and density. Also, you have to control the variables of the scoop the same each time. If you do a flat scoop, you need to make sure you are doing a flat scoop each time. If you do a heaping scoop, you need to make sure all the other times you do the exact same type of heaping scoop. You also need to make sure the particle sizes are consistent, and there are no air pockets in the scoop. I get that convenience is king these days, but I am not about to break my stance on how much accuracy matters when dosing nootropics. I want customers that actually care about what we are doing, and care about what really matters. If we lose customers because we didn't include an inaccurate plastic scoop, I am okay with that. If customers want to use another brand that doesn't properly analytically test their products because they included a 1 cent plastic scoop from China, a brand that most certainly also did not properly calibrate the size of said scoop anyway, then perhaps it is for the best. I know that might seem strange in the modern capitalist world, but I am not actually trying to get as many customers as we can. I want customers that resonate with the mission we are on, and believe in what we are doing. If a plastic scoop is the make or break issue, then they clearly are missing the point of what we are trying to do.