Comment · Tue, June 11, 2024 · ND Owner
Yall wanna explain dis 😂
Original post in this thread
bruhman123534t6 · 0 points
“We received a letter from an attorney representing Nootropics Depot, which sells the Nootropics Depot Shoden product that was Not Approved in this Review as we found only 23.5 mg of the 42 mg of withanolides that we expected based on its label. The letter claims that "the testing method you employed... was materially deficient, was not designed or intended to result in a fair and complete analysis of the withanolide glycosides in the Nootropics Depot Shoden... and resulted in a material understatement of the withanolide glycosides..." The letter demands that we retract our information about the product and cease publication of this Review, and, essentially, threatens legal action if we do not comply. We have no reason to believe that the information that we published about Nootropics Depot Shoden is incorrect and, therefore, do not intend to retract our information about it or delete this Review. We are alwa…
What they were answering
totallyjaded · 3 points
I saw that and couldn't quite wrap my head around CL's implication.
Just as a base consumer, if I divorce myself of all other information, what I see here is that it takes 450mg of NOW's product to get 11.5mg withanolides, and presumably, only 60mg of ND's product to get the same. Even if CL's methodology is the "correct" one.
So again, removing all else, this tells me that the ND product has more withanolides per measurement unit, costs less, and has undetectable amounts of metals.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
That's correct, but you are looking at it logically. Putting aside the method issues, which is its own topic. If CL has simply just ranked products based on the USP monograph clearly, and informed consumers that's what they were doing, I wouldn't be so heated. Just say: "We used the USP monograph, because that is what we had access to. These rankings are based on that, which only looks at 8 of the over 40 withanolides in ashwagandha. Some of the claims made by these brands are based on measures outside of the USP monograph. Because we can't currently measure those, our rankings should be put into the appropriate context. Then rank products based on the USP methods and leave it at that. However, they decided to be the arbiter of who passed and failed for their label claims, without actually testing appropriately for those label claims. Then they force consumers to pay them to see the full results, which most won't do. They only see the posts saying Nootropics Depot failed Consumer Lab testing. This is why the situation is different. They are stating unequivocally that Nootropics Depot claims there are 42mg of withanolides per dose, and they failed for that claim. That's false.
Now let's just look at the results using their methods. Gaia was one of the products they approved. Theirs had 2.8mg withanolides (based on the USP method). That's 8.39 times less than ours. Himalaya was also one they approved. It had 3mg withanolides (based on the USP method). That's 7.8 times less than ours. Those are approved according to CL, because the result met the claim. However, they are objectively much much less potent than ours. Ours failed according to them, because they say we did not meet our label claim. However, our label claim is based on a much more accurate look at the total withanolides in ashwagandha, not the USP one. In fact, we had the second highest amount of withanolides of any product they tested. The only product that had more was Herb Pharm Ashwagandha liquid, which had 24mg compared to our 23.5mg. That's effectively the same. So we had way more withanolides than the majority of other products, yet all anyone sees is that we failed...
I am going to buy all the products CL tested, and we will run them all with the more accurate Shoden methods. That will give us a real look into an apples-to-apples comparison. I have to do Consumer Lab's job for them, I guess...