How long does a bottle of marine collagen capsules last?

The first duration: the arithmetic of the bottle in use, at the label dose and at the doses the research used

How long does a bottle of marine collagen capsules last is a question with two durations folded into it, and the honest page separates them because a reader comparing prices wants the first and a reader finding a bottle at the back of a cupboard wants the second, and the shelf answers neither clearly. The first duration is the arithmetic of the bottle in use, and it is arithmetic, so the page does it. The worked example's bottle holds 120 capsules, each carrying 600mg of hydrolysed marine collagen with 6mg of vitamin C and zinc, and the label's daily dose is two capsules, 1200mg of collagen with 12mg of vitamin C at 15% of its reference value, so at the label dose the bottle lasts sixty days, two months of a daily habit, at 28p a day. A reader who takes one capsule a day, which halves the collagen to 600mg and drops the vitamin C below the 15% threshold at which the label's sentence applies, makes the bottle last a hundred and twenty days; a reader who takes four a day, doubling the label dose to 2400mg, finishes it in thirty. That is the habit arithmetic, and it is the arithmetic the capsule format is built for: a daily amount small enough to swallow in two, a bottle that lasts two months, a price that is pennies a day, and the three permissions for taking it every day, the regulator's, the trials' and the label's, on the every day page. At the doses the research used the arithmetic turns against the format, and the honest page runs it rather than leaving the reader to discover it at the till. The skin trials that measured elasticity and hydration ran at 2.5g a day at the lowest, which at 600mg a capsule is four or five capsules a day and a bottle lasting around four weeks, roughly double the label dose and the one research dose a capsule habit can reach without absurdity. The joint questionnaire trials ran at around 10g a day, which is seventeen capsules a day and a bottle lasting a week, at about two pounds a day, which no reader will sustain and which is the arithmetic on the capsules to 10g page. The tendon protocol gave 15g of gelatin or collagen with vitamin C about an hour before a loading session, which is around twenty-five capsules in one sitting and a bottle lasting under five days, or, taken only before the two or three loading sessions a week that the protocol is for, a bottle lasting a fortnight at twenty-five capsules a session, which is the arithmetic that makes capsules a habit format and powder the protocol format, since a scoop of powder delivers 10 or 15g in one measure for a fraction of the capsule price, and the rule to follow the dose and let it choose the format is on the capsules versus powder page. So the first duration is sixty days for the habit the bottle was designed for, four weeks for the lowest research dose, and days for the doses above it, and a reader who knows which dose they intend knows how long their bottle lasts before they buy it.

The second duration: the shelf life of the bottle, what degrades first, how to store it, what the label must say, and the worked example

The second duration is the shelf life of the bottle on the shelf, and it has three parts that the single best-before date summarises. The first part is the collagen itself, and it is the stable one: dry hydrolysed collagen is a protein with no fats to go rancid, little water to support microbial growth and no structure left to denature, since hydrolysis has already cut it into peptides, and gelatin, which is the same protein less cut, has sat in larders for centuries without spoiling; collagen capsules and powders carry best-before dates typically two to three years from manufacture when kept cool and dry, and the collagen in a bottle past its date is very unlikely to have changed in any way that matters, which is a safety statement about a food protein and not a licence to ignore the date. The second part is the vitamin C, and it is the fragile one: ascorbic acid is the least stable of the common supplement ingredients, oxidising with exposure to air, degrading faster with heat and light and fastest in the presence of moisture, so that the 12mg in a capsule declines slowly over the bottle's life and faster in a bottle left open, warm or damp, and an old bottle's vitamin C may be below the 12mg the label states by its best-before date, which matters to the label's sentence more than to the reader's health, since a reader eating fruit has vitamin C to spare. The third part is the capsule shell, which is gelatin or hypromellose and which absorbs moisture from the air: a bottle left open in a steamy bathroom takes on water, the capsules soften and may stick, and the moisture speeds the vitamin C's decline, so the storage instruction on every bottle, cool, dry, sealed and out of direct light, is written for the vitamin C and the shell rather than the collagen, and a kitchen cupboard away from the kettle or a bedroom drawer serves it better than the bathroom cabinet where most supplements live. UK law requires three things on every food supplement that bear on both durations, on the every day page's legal formula: a best-before date, so the second duration is printed on the bottle; a stated recommended daily portion, so the first duration can be calculated from the capsule count; and storage instructions, so the reader knows what the second duration assumes. Read together, the two durations give a reader a simple rule: an opened bottle used at the label dose is finished in sixty days, long before its best-before date, so the shelf life never matters to a reader with a habit; an unopened bottle lasts to the date printed if kept as the label says, and a bottle bought in bulk on offer should be counted against that date at the dose the reader actually takes, since six bottles at two a day is a year's supply that a three-year date comfortably covers and six bottles at twenty-five a session is a six-week supply that the date is irrelevant to. The worked example is the sixty-day bottle at its label dose, stated on its true terms: two capsules, 1200mg hydrolysed type 1 marine collagen with 12mg vitamin C at 15% of its reference value plus zinc, 120 for £16.99 at 28p a day, lab tested and UK made, lasting sixty days as a habit and under five at the tendon protocol, carrying vitamin C's collagen formation sentence for cartilage and bones, which is the part of the capsule that ages, and no claim for the collagen, which is the part that does not. How long does a bottle of marine collagen capsules last: sixty days in use at the label dose and days at the research doses, and two to three years on the shelf, with the vitamin C the first thing to go and the bathroom the wrong place to keep it.

What to check on the label