Four claim statements on the front, none with an asterisk. Here is what each one is doing.
The Metaglucent label says it supports healthy blood glucose levels and insulin sensitivity.
Four claim statements appear on the front of the bottle. Support phrases like these are ordinary structure and function claims for a dietary supplement.
On most products in this aisle these panels carry the benefit claims that the Supplement Facts box cannot support: energy, stamina, vitality, confidence, each with an asterisk. They are where a label goes to promise things.
Both of this brand’s panels decline to. They are navigation, pointing back at the formula, the facts panel, the directions and the format. The recurring instruction across both is Follow Label Directions.
That leaves the entire promise of this product resting on two words printed on the front of the bottle, which is what the cards below are about.
Printed on the front of the bottle, directly under the brand name. Diabetes is a disease, and 21 CFR 101.93(g)(2) lists the name of the product among the factors by which FDA judges a disease claim. The FDA disclaimer appears on the pack, and a disclaimer does not make a disease claim permissible. This is the most serious labelling question we have raised on any site on this desk.
Taken alone this is an ordinary structure and function claim, of the kind a supplement may make with the disclaimer attached. It is the company it keeps on this pack that changes how it reads.
“Improves” is a stronger verb than “supports”, and insulin sensitivity is a clinical measure rather than a feeling. Nothing on the panel is presented with a dose that could be matched to a trial measuring it.
Three words on the front of the bottle with nothing behind them that we can check. No study is cited on the pack, no laboratory is named, and no certificate was published to us.
A badge on the listing. No doctor is named on the label, on the listing, or anywhere in the material we were given. We have not invented one, and a credential you cannot check is not a credential.
Printed in a roundel on the front, and completely true. One capsule a day is exactly what the suggested use panel says, and it is the easiest claim on the pack to verify.
A dietary supplement may make what the regulations call a structure and function claim: a statement that an ingredient affects the normal structure or function of the body. Supports healthy blood glucose levels is that kind of statement. So, arguably, is supports insulin sensitivity, although improves is a stronger verb than supports and insulin sensitivity is a clinical measure rather than a feeling.
A supplement may not make a disease claim — a statement that the product diagnoses, treats, cures, mitigates or prevents a disease. That territory belongs to drugs, which go through a different process entirely.
21 CFR 101.93(g)(1) defines disease broadly: damage to an organ, part, structure, or system of the body such that it does not function properly, or a state of health leading to such dysfunctioning. Diabetes sits squarely inside that definition.
Paragraph (g)(2) then lists the ways a claim can be made, and the very first factor is the name of the product. That is the provision that makes a phrase printed under the brand name — rather than in a sentence — relevant at all.
We are a retailer, not a regulator, and we are not announcing a verdict. We are printing the regulation next to the photograph and letting a reader who can see both draw their own conclusion.
The FDA disclaimer is a required footnote to permitted structure and function claims. It is not a licence that makes any other claim acceptable, and it appears on this pack in its own box on the opposite panel from the front.
The disclaimer on this label begins with an asterisk: *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
An asterisk is a reference mark. It exists to connect a footnote to the thing it footnotes. On a supplement pack the convention is that the claims carry the mark and the disclaimer answers it, so a reader can follow one to the other.
We examined the front artwork at high magnification. There are four claim statements on it and not one of them carries an asterisk. The mark on the back has nothing on the front to point at.
Taken by itself this is a small thing, and we would not build a page around it. It is worth a paragraph because it is the second small production inconsistency on the same pack, and the first one is much larger.
The flat front artwork supplied beside the Supplement Facts panel does not carry the Diabetes Support Formula line. It does not carry the two support lines. It does not carry Science · Health · Trust. The two icon roundels on the navy band are blank.
The bottle images in the same pack carry all of it. So the pack contains two versions of the same front, one of which makes four claims and one of which makes none.
We cannot tell you which one is printed on the bottle that would arrive at your door, and we are not going to guess. What we can do is publish both files and say plainly that they differ.
It matters because every other page on this site treats the disease phrase as real, and a reader is entitled to know that the evidence for it is the marketing photography rather than the flat label artwork.
The label beats the brief. Where two label files disagree with each other, we print both and describe the disagreement rather than choosing the convenient one.
Nothing specific, and that is not a criticism of this brand in particular. The word carries no defined threshold anywhere in the regulations. There is no amount of any ingredient above which a product supports something and below which it does not.
So a claim built on it cannot fail. Whatever is in the capsule, and in whatever quantity, supports healthy blood glucose levels is a sentence that cannot be shown to be wrong, because nobody has specified what would count as it being wrong.
This is why we spend so much of this site on amounts rather than on adjectives. An amount can be compared with a trial. A word like support cannot be compared with anything.
The second verb on this pack is different. Improves insulin sensitivity is a stronger construction and points at a measurable clinical quantity. Nothing on this panel is presented with a dose that could be matched to a trial measuring it.
Both columns are long, because this is a genuinely divided product.
Nothing on this page should be read as a claim that Metaglucent treats anything. No dietary supplement may lawfully claim to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent a disease. If blood sugar is the reason you are reading this, the clinician who manages it is the person to talk to, and the label's own caution panel says so too.
We do not know why, and it is the single most serious question on this label. 21 CFR 101.93(g)(1) defines a disease as damage to an organ, part, structure or system of the body such that it does not function properly, or a state of health leading to such dysfunctioning. Paragraph (g)(2) lists the name of the product among the factors by which FDA judges whether a statement is a disease claim. Diabetes is a named disease. The required FDA disclaimer is printed on the pack, and a disclaimer does not make a disease claim permissible. We print the regulation, the photograph of the front panel and nothing else, because the judgement belongs to a regulator and not to a retailer.
No. No dietary supplement may lawfully claim to treat, cure or prevent a disease, and this one carries the standard FDA disclaimer saying exactly that on the same pack as the phrase on the front. Diabetes is managed by a clinician with monitoring and, for most people, medicine. Nothing sold on this site changes that, and nobody should stop or alter a prescription because of a capsule.
Yes, all four. We recalculated every one against the FDA’s published Daily Values and they check out: vitamin C 90 mg against a 90 mg DV is 100 per cent; vitamin D 25 mcg against 20 mcg is 125 per cent; magnesium 20 mg against 420 mg is 4.8 per cent, printed as 5; chromium 100 mcg against 35 mcg is 285.7 per cent, printed as 286. That is the most careful arithmetic we have found on any label on this desk.
No doctor is named on the label, on the listing, or anywhere in the material we were given. We have not invented one to fill the gap. A credential you cannot check is not a credential.
No, and nothing in this category is. The FDA states plainly that it does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed. The listing says the facility is FDA-registered, which means the factory is listed with the agency — a registration, not an endorsement, and not a check of what is in the bottle.
Because the score is the sum of eight honest lines rather than one marketing line. The back of this bottle earns 5 out of 5 for percentage accuracy and 5 for ease of use. The front earns 1 for claim honesty, the blend earns 2 for dose against research, and there are no verified reviews to score. Averaging those gives 2.8. We publish the parts as well as the total so you can disagree with any line of it.
One bottle is 30 capsules: thirty days at one a day, finishing with half the 60-day guarantee still to run. The price is shown at checkout.
Order NowRead the label firstNo price was published to us. We print no figure we have not seen ourselves. · 60-day guarantee from purchase · Not for under 18, pregnancy or nursing