Comment · Fri, November 13, 2020 · ND Owner
I compared the capsule weight consistency between ND and a competitor. The results won't shock you.
Original post in this thread
umbrella_term · 24 points
I weighed 10 capsules of Intellimeds' 400 mg phenibut and the inconsistency surprised me. The weights in milligrams were: 663, 667, 673, 685, 709, 716, 718, 732, 741, 752. Big differences! Average weight 705.6mg, standard deviation 31.9 mg. One of their capsules weighs ~123 mg, meaning the content weights were between 540 mg and 629. I assume some is filler and flow agent, but there's no info about it on their product site. If it's pure phenibut, the doses are dangerously mislabeled.
Then I remembered I had some of ND's 500mg yeast extract capsules and weighed ten of those. The numbers are much more consistent: 603, 608, 610, 613, 618, 620, 624, 626, 627, 636; average 618.5 mg, standard deviation 10.11 mg. An empty capsule weighs exactly 100 mg, meaning I got a slight bonus on each, and that's certainly not a problem with something as safe as yeast extract.
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
LOL, I invite everyone to start doing that with a bunch of competitors out there. We do, and you would not be surprised to know we find horrible inconsistencies and under/overfilling almost every single time. We have put a lot of work into capsule-to-capsule consistency, which is actually very difficult. We always err on the positive side, too. So we always target higher fills to ensure things are never short. We also only use a single manufacturer for our veggie capsules, as we have vetted them and can ensure consistency. Other capsule manufacturers are all over the place, and many people just use bovine gelatin because it is way cheaper. Ours are always veggie, and always from a manufacturer we have qualified. Moreover, we don't just measure capsule contents and variance. We also assay the finished capsules to ensure the active ingredient in them is in spec. You would not be surprised to know that most of the competitor samples that we assay also fail our specs. Adding in these quality control steps is not easy, and it really complicates the process. However, it is crucial to ensure the end product is correct every time. Almost nobody tests to the level we do across the entire process. We even rewrote the USP capsule variance tests to our own standards, as the way they are written by default is not ideal.