What Standardization Percentages Mean on a Label
You'll often see a botanical extract listed with a percentage next to it — "Bacopa Monnieri (20%)," "Green Tea Extract (50%)." That number isn't purity, and it isn't potency in any general sense. It's telling you something more specific.
What "standardized to X%" actually means
Plants contain many different compounds in naturally variable amounts — the same herb grown in different soil, climate, or harvest conditions can contain meaningfully different levels of its key constituents from batch to batch. Standardization is a manufacturing step where an extract is calibrated to guarantee a consistent percentage of one specific marker compound (or class of compounds), regardless of natural variation in the raw plant material. "Green Tea Extract (50%)" typically means the extract is standardized so that 50% of it, by weight, is a specific measured compound (commonly polyphenols or EGCG for green tea) — not that the extract is "50% pure" in some general sense, and not a claim about the other 50%, which is simply the rest of the extract material.
Why standardization exists
Without it, a bottle of "ginkgo extract" from one harvest could differ substantially from another bottle of the same labeled ingredient, just because the underlying plants varied. Standardization is a consistency and quality-control tool — it lets a manufacturer make the same product batch after batch, and it lets you compare the same marker compound across different brands' labels, if you want to.
What it doesn't tell you
A higher standardization percentage on one marker compound isn't automatically "stronger" or "better" than a lower one on a different product — different manufacturers sometimes standardize to different marker compounds for the same plant, which makes direct percentage comparisons across brands unreliable unless you confirm they're both standardizing to the same compound. It also doesn't tell you the total amount of the extract in a serving — that's a separate figure, shown as the ingredient's actual weight (in mg) on the label, not the percentage itself.
Where to find it on our product pages
When a manufacturer's label states a standardization percentage, we show it exactly as declared — see the "Ingredients & label facts" section on any product page. If a percentage isn't listed for a given ingredient, that's because the manufacturer's own label doesn't state one, not something we've omitted.