This relates to ANY Herbal Product, not just Green Tea
When comparing Herbal products, ask yourself a question. What potency product am I actually getting in terms of Herbal Equivalent. With most herbs being available in a number of different extract ratios, 500mg of extract can span a range of actual herbal equivalents.
What this means is that 500mg of one extract is not necessarily equal to 500mg of another extract. Do you know what strength you are getting? On the surface, it is a pretty safe bet that you do not.
As such, how do you compare products and quotes based on looking at the amount of extract used in a given product? Lets look at an example:
Is this a reasonable potency product?
This product looks like a quite potent Green Tea Capsule. The 500mg of Green Tea Extract looks like an impressive label claim. But what is it really? How much Green Tea, or Green Tea equivalent, is it? About the only thing that we know about this product is that it is using a leaf extract. After that, it could be anything.
To a consumer, it may look like a good buy, but is it?
It is common practice in the USA to identify Herbal Products by the amount of Extract that is used in the product, but this is very misleading for the consumer, as they do not know what they are actually getting. What may look like a potent product, like the example here, may well be a relatively weak product with a seemingly impressive label claim.
Using Green Tea as an example, there are many different extract ratio’s available and they can be prepared using a number of different extraction solvents. They are not all equal.
Common Green Tea extract ratios are 5:1, 10:1, 12:1, 25:1 and 30:1.
Some use 100% water as the solvent extraction while others use ethanol and water in different concentrations.
As we note from the information on the left hand panel, extracts can vary greatly depending on the extract ratio and the solvents used to achieve the extract.
Looking at the product above, and armed with a reasonable amount of information that the typical consumer would not have access to, I can make some assumptions about this product. They may be wrong, but they are based on some information and knowledge. A typical consumer would not have this knowledge, nor I would suggest, do many sales people in a retail store. If I am wrong, what hope do they have.
Based on what I can determine, this product is a relatively “weak” Green Tea product, when looked at in the context of the amount of Green Tea and Polyphenols that it claims. My assessment is that the product contains:
- 500mg of a 10:1 Extract (the lower end of the scale)
- Equivalent to 5,000mg of Green Tea per Capsule
- 250mg Polyphenol content (higher extract ratios are typically between 80% and 90%
Polyphenol content rather than the 50% of this product) - Could be a Water Extract
- This would be about the cheapest Green Tea extract around
- It could also be 500mg of a 5:1 Extract which would be the equivalent of 2500mg
Common Green Tea strengths are in the region of 10,000mg to 15,000mg per capsule with a much higher Polyphenol content.
So is this a potent product?
While it looks impressive to the casual observer, it is probably towards the bottom of the potency spectrum.
So how do I know what I should be buying?
My suggestion is to look for a number of indicators to the real potency of the product.
Firstly: Forget the amount of Extract used as it bears no relationship with anything, unless you know what the extract ratio is
Secondly: Look for the Herbal Equivalent of the product
What is a Herbal Extract?
According to the Australian TGA, which bases its definitions on the EU Pharmacopoiea:
Extract means the complex, multi-component mixture obtained after using a solvent to select for, or remove, components of the herbal material. Extracts may be in dry, liquid or semisolid form.
Extracts are not the same as expressed juices, pure chemicals isolated from a herb or synthetically modified plant constituents.
Herbal material means a plant or part of a plant (defined by its botanical scientific name according to the binomial nomenclature system and by the plant part), whether whole, fragmented, cut or ground, and in an unprocessed state (whether fresh or dried).
Herbal preparation means any preparation of a herbal material that involves any further processing of the raw herb other than drying, fragmenting, cutting or grinding.
Native extract means the material consisting only of components present in the original plant or formed during the extraction process, excluding any excipients or other added substances.
This term may refer to liquid extracts or semi-solid extracts from which the added solvent has been removed, or may refer to a dry extract or that portion of a finished extract that is comprised solely of plant components.
Native extract ratio means the ratio of the mass of herbal material to the mass of the resulting native herbal preparation (= native extract).
When determining whether two similar extracts are in fact equivalent, the native extracts should be used for the comparison.
Author
John N. Thomas
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