Cost Per Effective Dose: Why Cheaper Isn't Always Better

Comparing supplements by price-per-bottle is one of the most common — and most misleading — ways to judge value in this category. A $25 bottle with underdosed ingredients is worse value than a $50 bottle with clinically relevant doses, even though it looks cheaper on the shelf.

A Worked Example

Say two products both list Berberine on the label:

	Product A	Product B
Price	$25/bottle	$49/bottle
Berberine per serving	100mg (in a blend)	500mg (disclosed)
Servings needed to reach 500mg	5 servings	1 serving
Effective cost per "real" dose	~5x the sticker price	Sticker price

Product A looks cheaper until you account for how much of it you'd actually need to take to reach a dose that matches the research — at which point it's the more expensive option, and you'd be taking 5x the recommended serving to get there, which most labels don't actually recommend or support.

How to Do This Calculation Yourself

1. Find the studied effective dose for the ingredient you care about most (search "[ingredient] clinical dose study")
2. Check how much of that ingredient is in one serving of the product (only possible if it's not hidden in a proprietary blend)
3. Calculate how many servings you'd need to hit the studied dose
4. Multiply the per-serving price by that number

Why This Calculation Is Impossible for Some Products

This entire method depends on knowing the individual ingredient dose — which is exactly what proprietary blends hide. If you can't complete step 2, that's itself useful information: it means you can't verify the product's value at all, regardless of the sticker price.