What should you look for in 21st century supplements fake?

The cost floor: the six costs a genuine tub cannot be sold below, the floor worked for a value brand's cheapest products, why price is a stronger tell than packaging, and the two fakes that are not counterfeits

What should you look for in a value supplement brand's products to tell whether they are fake is a question that starts, for a brand whose whole proposition is a low price, with a number: the cost floor. A genuine tub has six costs that cannot be avoided. The ingredient, bought as a commodity by the tonne but never free. The capsule or tablet, a fraction of a penny each but multiplied by the count. The bottle and its seal. The label and its printing. The freight from an American factory to a UK warehouse. And the marketplace fee, a fixed share of the sale price plus a fulfilment charge, which for a low-priced item can be the largest cost of the six. Add them and the result is the lowest price at which a genuine unit can be sold without losing money, and a brand built on being cheap runs close to that floor on purpose, which makes the floor easy to see. For a value brand's cheapest products, a large count of a plain vitamin or mineral, the floor is a few pounds; it is low, and it is not zero, and a listing priced below it is telling the buyer something the packaging cannot.

Price is a stronger tell than packaging for a reason the counterfeit literature is clear about: counterfeiters copy packaging well, because a label, a bottle and a seal are the easiest parts of a product to reproduce and the parts a buyer inspects, while the contents and the economics are the hard parts. A fake tub of a value brand looks like a real one, often down to the lot number format, and a buyer comparing the two in their hands will usually not tell them apart. But a fake tub is sold to make money on a product whose genuine margin is already thin, which means the counterfeiter either undercuts the floor to win the sale, in which case the price is the tell, or matches the genuine price and relies on volume through a listing the buyer trusts, in which case the tell is not on the tub at all but in the chain the tub came through, which the next section covers. A buyer who works the floor for the product they are buying has a number against which every listing can be checked in a second.

Two forms of fake are not counterfeits at all and are worth separating because they are more common. The first is the grey import: a genuine tub, made by the brand, bought in bulk in the United States and shipped to the UK by a third party without the brand's involvement, sold without a UK or EU importer's address, often near its expiry and sometimes stored badly on the way; it is real, it is not a UK legal product, and nobody in the UK answers for it. The second is cheap by design mistaken for fake: a value brand that chooses the cheapest forms of each nutrient, the oxide rather than the glycinate, the cyanocobalamin rather than the methyl form, with fillers and coatings to match, has made a genuine product that a buyer used to premium forms may suspect is counterfeit when it is simply built to a price, which is covered on the page on why the brand is so cheap. Neither is a fake, and both are found by the address line and the ingredient list rather than by any counterfeit check.

A floor worked and two non-counterfeits separated, and the chain a fake comes through, the three separate checks it forces, the lot number, and the worked example, which is the next section.

The commingled-stock problem and why a genuine listing can deliver a fake unit, the three checks it forces, the lot number as the check on the unit itself, the brand left unnamed, the worked example with its floor shown, and the verdict

The chain matters because of a mechanism most buyers do not know exists. When a marketplace fulfils orders itself, it often pools stock of the same product code from several sellers into one bin, and ships whichever unit is nearest when an order comes in. A buyer who orders from a listing that is genuine, sold by a seller that is reputable, can receive a unit that was supplied into the pool by a different seller, and if that seller's units were counterfeit, the fake reaches buyers of every seller on the listing. The intellectual property research on counterfeit goods describes this commingling as the route by which fakes of trusted brands reach buyers who did everything right, and it means that the question is fake is three questions, each checked separately: is the listing genuine, is the seller reputable, and is the unit in my hand real.

The listing is checked by its history and its ownership: a listing that has existed for years with a large review history under the brand's own storefront or an authorised distributor is more likely genuine than one created recently with a cluster of reviews, and the review patterns the competition regulator describes, date clustering, generic language and unverified purchases, are read on the listing as on any other. The seller is checked by name and by the sold-by line on the order, with the brand's own store or a named UK distributor preferred to a seller with a string of letters for a name, and with the address line on the tub confirming that a UK or EU operator stands behind it. The unit is checked last and the check is the lot number: every genuine tub carries a printed lot number and an expiry date, the brand will confirm on request that a lot number is one of theirs and when it was made, and for a product enrolled in a testing programme the lot appears in the public database. A lot number that is missing, that is printed in a different way from the expiry date, that is smudged or raised where it should be flat, or that the brand does not recognise is the tell on the unit itself, which no listing or seller check reaches. A buyer who receives a unit that fails the check returns it as counterfeit, which marketplaces act on, and does not swallow it to find out.

The brand is not named in the body of this page, by rule, and the rule fits the question better than a name would, because the cost floor, the commingling problem and the three checks apply to every value brand sold through a marketplace, and a buyer with any of them in mind works the floor for the product, checks the listing, the seller and the lot, and reads the address line, which sorts a counterfeit from a grey import from a product that is simply cheap by design.

The worked example is placed with its own floor shown, because the same arithmetic applies to it: {FL} is 180 capsules for £19.99 at 22p a day, a price that has to cover 1500mg magnesium bisglycinate per two-capsule dose, an HPMC shell and rice flour, a bottle and seal, a printed label with a UK address, a UK fill under GMP and BRC, batch testing for lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium, and the marketplace fee, and that leaves a margin a small brand can live on; a listing offering the same tub at a third of the price would be below the floor and would be the tell. Every tub carries a lot number that matches the batch certificate available on request, 300mg elemental at 80% NRV, two capsules with the evening meal. The full label breakdown is here.

The verdict: look first at the price against the cost floor, because a genuine tub cannot sell below its six costs and a counterfeit usually does. Then check three things separately, since pooled marketplace stock lets a fake unit reach a genuine listing's buyers: the listing's history, the seller's name and the tub's lot number, confirmed with the brand. And separate the two fakes that are not counterfeits, the grey import found by a missing UK address and the cheap-by-design product found by its ingredient list, before concluding anything about the tub.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

How can I tell if a cheap supplement is fake?

Start with the cost floor rather than the packaging: a genuine tub cannot be sold for long below the sum of its ingredient, capsule, bottle, label, freight and marketplace fee, and a value brand runs close to that floor on purpose, so a listing priced below it is the strongest counterfeit tell on any marketplace, while packaging is a weaker tell because counterfeiters copy it well; then check the listing's history, the seller's name and the tub's lot number separately, because pooled marketplace stock lets a fake unit reach buyers of a genuine listing.

Can I get a fake supplement from a genuine listing?

Yes, through commingled stock: when a marketplace fulfils orders itself it often pools units of the same product code supplied by several sellers into one bin and ships whichever is nearest, so a buyer who orders from a genuine listing sold by a reputable seller can receive a unit another seller supplied, and if that seller's units were counterfeit the fake reaches everyone; the intellectual property research describes this as the route by which fakes of trusted brands reach careful buyers, which is why the unit itself is checked by lot number regardless of the listing.

What is the difference between a fake supplement and a grey import?

A fake is a counterfeit, a tub not made by the brand, sold below the cost floor or at the genuine price through a trusted listing, and found by price, by the chain and finally by a lot number the brand does not recognise; a grey import is a genuine tub made by the brand, bought in bulk abroad and shipped to the UK by a third party without a UK or EU importer's address, often near expiry and sometimes stored badly, which is real, is not a UK legal product and has nobody in the UK answering for it, and is found by the missing address line rather than by any counterfeit check.

How do I check a supplement lot number?

Every genuine tub carries a printed lot number and an expiry date, and the brand will confirm on request that a lot number is one of theirs and when the batch was made, while a product enrolled in a testing programme has its lot in the programme's public database; a lot number that is missing, printed differently from the expiry date, smudged or raised where it should be flat, or that the brand does not recognise is the tell on the unit itself, and a unit that fails is returned as counterfeit and not swallowed to find out.

Could this site's magnesium be faked?

Any product sold through a marketplace could in principle be, which is why the same checks apply to it: the floor is £19.99 for 180 capsules at 22p a day, covering 1500mg magnesium bisglycinate per dose, an HPMC shell and rice flour, a bottle, a label with a UK address, a UK fill under GMP and BRC, four-metal batch testing and the marketplace fee with a small brand's margin, so a listing at a third of the price would be below the floor and would be the tell; every tub carries a lot number that matches the batch certificate available on request.

Sources

1. The counterfeit supplement literature: falsified and counterfeit dietary supplements are documented on online marketplaces, concentrated in high-value branded categories, with seller verification and packaging inspection the principal consumer defences. PubMed record
2. The marketplace commingled inventory problem: when a marketplace fulfils orders from pooled stock of the same product code supplied by several sellers, a buyer who orders from a reputable seller can receive a unit supplied by another, so that counterfeit units entering the pool through one seller reach buyers of all, which is why the listing, the seller and the unit received are three separate checks. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ipo-counterfeit-goods-research
3. The UK competition regulator's work on fake and incentivised reviews, and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024's ban on commissioning, publishing or hosting fake reviews: patterns the regulator describes include date clustering, generic language, unverified purchases and reviewer accounts with no other history. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fake-and-misleading-online-reviews
4. The food information regulations on responsibility: the food business operator under whose name a food is marketed is responsible for the information, and for a food imported from outside the UK that operator is the importer, who must ensure a compliant label in English with a UK or EU address. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2011/1169/article/8

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