Bloomingdale, IL—In efforts to address low-quality products in the marketplace, NOW has been conducting an industry self-policing program of testing unfamiliar brands found on Amazon since 2017. The company later expanded its efforts to include testing products sold on Walmart.com, due to the platform’s increasing market share. NOW had chosen not to test health food store brands or practitioner brands, as quality issues do not seem to be a major issue with those brands.

NOW's latest round of product testing (its 16th in its ongoing efforts) examined more than 30 berberine supplements. NOW made the call to test this ingredient, which has been trending on social media, after a survey of the online marketplace turned up questionable products. The company explained that a rapid rise in popularity creates the opportunity for deceptive sellers to offer inferior or adulterated products in an effort to cash in on the trend. As NOW's study revealed, unscrupulous players are aiming to make a buck off of the berberine trend: Testing identified "serious quality problems from 'no name' brands sold on Amazon and Walmart.com." 

“We purchased two bottles of each product from 33 brands, including NOW, sold on both Amazon and Walmart.com,” said Dan Richard, VP of Global Sales and Marketing, NOW Health Group. “It was obvious even before testing that many brands were fraudulently mislabeling potency on the front label panel and many others had suspiciously high claims.”

About Berberine Labeling

NOW said berberine supplements (like the company's own offering) are typically made in hydrochloride (HCl) form, obtained from an extraction of Berberis aristata bark. Berberine HCl dihydrate is typically used as the supplement source of Berberine HCl and is 85-90% potency, the company explained, so if brands claim 500 mg Berberine on a label and it is in the HCl form, the supplier must input 550-575 mg Berberine HCl dihydrate to meet the label claim. NOW said some brands claim “Berberine” in the Supplement Facts panel for potency, while others list “Berberine HCl.”  Both of these are technically legal, NOW said, but full disclosure would list like: “Berberine HCl 500 mg (from 550 mg Berberine HCl dihydrate).”

NOW's Testing of Berberine Products

As NOW explained, the quality of each brand was assessed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet light detection (HPLC-UV). HPLC was also used to quantify the amount of berberine hydrochloride in tested products. NOW also sent one unopened bottle of each brand to Alkemist Labs, an industry-leading contract laboratory that provided an independent report on the products. HPLC was performed by NOW’s in-house lab and Alkemist Labs.

Key Results on Berberine, as Outlined by NOW

• 33 brands selected for testing are less known and sold almost entirely on these online platforms. The chosen products were purchased from both Amazon and Walmart.com in early November 2023. 
• Results showed "serious levels" of low potencies, with every brand testing below 100% potency except NOW. Seven brands did contain over 80% labeled potency; three brands contained 90-97% potency.
• 18 of the 33 brands tested contained less than 40% of labeled potency. NOW emphasized: "That’s more than half of all brands tested that didn’t even contain a mediocre 40% level of potency.
• 7 of the 33 tested samples had 1% or less of Berberine potency in each product. "All of these seriously flawed brands were tested for the first-time in NOW’s testing program and may be new brands," NOW reported. "These include: Earth Bare, Greabby Gummies, GreenPeople Formula, KoNefancy, Satoomi, Vitamiscence & Wellness Labs Rx."
• Other brands have been testing by NOW in the past, when the company looked at other trending supplement categories. Some of those brands had similar problems. NOW pointed to the aSquared brand, which has failed eight different rounds of product testing and "has the worst record for potencies tested among all brands."