Every page on PlainVitamins is generated from the Source: NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), a public federal database of supplement label filings. Our database captures product names, brands, ingredient lists, serving sizes, servings per container, physical state, market status, and Daily Value percentages as declared on the Supplement Facts panel. Brand and ingredient rollups are computed deterministically from product records at build time, no editorial weighting, no paid placements, no scoring adjustments.

Daily Value (DV) percentages reference Source: FDA 21 CFR 101.9, Nutrition Labeling of Food, Reference Daily Intake (RDI) values for adults. Products with no DV listed are either filed without one or contain ingredients for which the FDA has not set a reference daily intake (common for botanicals, amino acids, and specialty compounds). A missing DV is neither good nor bad; it reflects regulatory scope, not product quality.

Not medical advice. The DSLD catalogs labels, not FDA approvals. Under the Source: Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), 1994, 21 U.S.C. § 321(ff), dietary supplements do not require pre-market approval for safety or efficacy. Information on this site is provided for educational and reference purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a licensed healthcare provider before starting, stopping, or combining any supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, take prescription medication, or have a medical condition.

Choosing the right starting point

If you arrived from a search engine looking for a specific product, the supplement search is faster than browsing, type the brand or product name directly. If you are comparing options within a category (vitamin D, fish oil, multivitamins, probiotics, magnesium), use the type-filtered listing and toggle the on-market filter. If you are researching how widespread a particular nutrient is across the supplement market, the ingredient index sorts by how many product labels declare each ingredient and links to per-ingredient NIH ODS dosing context (RDA, UL, IU↔mcg conversions, drug interactions).

For brand-level analysis (a manufacturer's full lineup, on-market vs. off-market ratios, ingredient diversity across products), the brands directory is the most useful entry point. Brand profiles include rolled-up statistics plus the underlying product list, so you can drill from "this brand has 87 products" down to the individual labels.

Refresh cadence and data lifecycle

Our database is rebuilt periodically from the upstream NIH DSLD source. Between rebuilds, individual product pages remain consistent with the database snapshot at build time. When new manufacturer label submissions arrive at the NIH and we haven't yet refreshed, they will not appear here until the next rebuild cycle. For the most current state of the federal database (including products newer than our snapshot), consult dsld.od.nih.gov directly. The "data as of" date shown on each detail page reflects when our copy was last regenerated.

We do not edit, correct, or override individual label records. Errors in the upstream DSLD (typos, mis-classified product types, stale market-status flags) appear unchanged on PlainVitamins until the manufacturer or the NIH updates the source record. If you spot a clearly inaccurate field on a product page, the correct path is to contact the manufacturer to file an updated label submission; the NIH will then propagate the change to the DSLD on the next refresh cycle. For our own data-rendering issues (typos in editorial commentary, broken links, formatting errors that don't reflect the upstream source), email the address on the contact page and we will review.

What we deliberately do not do

PlainVitamins does not assign quality scores, "best of" rankings by perceived merit, or editorial recommendations. The supplement market is regulated under a post-market enforcement model (DSHEA 1994), and label data alone cannot tell consumers which products will work for them or which are independently verified for potency and contamination. Where independent verification exists (USP Verified, NSF Certified, ConsumerLab), the verifying organization publishes its own list, that's a more official source than any editorial ranking we could construct. We surface the raw label data and let consumers and researchers draw their own conclusions.

We also do not blend retailer review data, sales rankings, or marketing claims into the editorial content. The numbers shown on every page derive directly from the NIH DSLD source records; nothing on PlainVitamins is influenced by advertising relationships or supplement-brand sponsorships, and our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense.

Compiled byPlainVitamins Editorial, Dietary Supplements Editorial Team