By Roy Newlan, founder Last updated 18/08/2026
Pick up almost any sleep or recovery supplement and somewhere on the label you'll find the words "proprietary blend". It sounds like a trade secret worth protecting. Usually it's something simpler: a way of not telling you the doses. This page covers what a proprietary blend actually is, why brands use them, how to read one, and why Settl doesn't have one.
What is a proprietary blend, and why does it matter that Settl doesn't use one?
A proprietary blend is a labelling format that declares the total weight of a group of ingredients while hiding how much of each one is inside. It matters because without per-ingredient doses you cannot check any ingredient against the amount the research actually uses, and Settl's whole pitch is that every dose is checkable.
The label lists the ingredients in the blend, usually in descending order by weight, and gives you one number for the lot. "Sleep Support Blend, 800mg" might contain six ingredients. You know the six names. You know they add up to 800mg. You don't know whether the ingredient you bought the product for is 500mg of that, or 5mg.
What does a proprietary-blend label look like next to a full-disclosure one?
Here are two invented labels for the same imaginary six-ingredient formula. Same ingredients, very different information.
| Proprietary-blend label | Full-disclosure label | |
|---|---|---|
| What it says | "Night Blend 1,200mg: magnesium, glycine, L-theanine, chamomile, inositol, potassium" | Magnesium 146mg, glycine 3,000mg, L-theanine 200mg, chamomile extract 50mg, inositol 900mg, potassium 200mg |
| What you learn | Six names and one total | Six names and six doses |
| Can you compare to research doses? | No | Yes, ingredient by ingredient |
| Can you compare to another product? | Only on the total | Line by line |
| Can you check the price per effective dose? | No | Yes |
The full-disclosure column happens to be readable in thirty seconds. The blend column takes exactly as long to read and tells you almost nothing you can act on.
Why do brands use proprietary blends?
Two main reasons, and only one of them is the official one. The official reason is protecting the recipe from copycats. The commercial reason is cost.
The recipe-protection argument is thinner than it sounds. The ingredient list is still printed in order, so a competitor already knows what's in there and roughly the ranking. What a blend actually hides is the dose, and the dose is where the money is. Effective doses of real actives are expensive. A gram-scale ingredient like glycine costs real money at 3,000mg a serve and almost nothing at 100mg a serve, and both versions get the same word on the front of the tub.
The industry has a name for the low-dose version: pixie dusting. Add a sprinkle of a well-known ingredient, list it on the label, let the ingredient's reputation do the selling. A proprietary blend is the format that makes pixie dusting invisible. To be clear, none of this makes a blended product unsafe, and some blends carry perfectly good doses. The point is narrower: you cannot tell, and the format is what stops you telling.
How do you read a proprietary blend?
You can't recover the hidden doses, but the label leaks more than brands would like. Three checks get you most of the way.
First, the order. Ingredients in a blend are typically listed by weight, heaviest first. If the ingredient you care about is last on a 400mg blend with five ingredients ahead of it, it is arithmetically small.
Second, the total against the first ingredient's research dose. If the whole blend is 500mg and the first-listed ingredient is one the evidence commonly examines at 3,000mg, the maths is already over. The blend cannot contain an effective dose of it even if it were the only ingredient in there.
Third, the serve size. A blend spread across a two-capsule serve has a hard ceiling of roughly 1.5g of everything combined. Gram-scale actives simply do not fit, which is a big part of why glycine products, and Settl, come as powders.
What does Settl put on the label instead?
Every active, every dose, per 9g scoop. Nothing grouped, nothing totalled, nothing held back.
| Active in each 9g scoop | Delivers per serve |
|---|---|
| Glycine | 3,000mg |
| Sodium | ~999mg sodium (from sodium chloride) |
| Inositol | 900mg |
| L-theanine | 200mg |
| Potassium | ~200mg potassium (from potassium citrate) |
| Magnesium glycinate | 146mg elemental magnesium (from 730mg of the compound) |
| Chamomile flower extract 45:1 | 50mg, about 2.25g dried flower equivalent |
Where a form matters, the label says which form and what it delivers, because "730mg of magnesium glycinate" and "146mg of elemental magnesium" are the same fact stated honestly. Where an ingredient is concentrated, the concentration is stated too. The chamomile is a 45:1 extract, so 50mg is a bigger number than it looks, and we've done that maths in full. The complete panel, with what each form delivers, lives on the ingredients page.
Doesn't full disclosure just hand the formula to competitors?
Yes, and we're fine with that. The formula was never the moat. Anyone can read our label and order the same seven ingredients tomorrow.
What a competitor can't copy off a label is the reason the doses are what they are. Settl is the nightly routine I was already mixing from six separate tubs, packaged into one scoop, at the amounts I actually take. Hiding those amounts would protect nothing and cost the one thing the label is for, which is letting you check our work.
The dose is the claim
A supplement label makes one honest promise or none. The ingredient name is marketing. The dose is the claim. A proprietary blend keeps the marketing and withholds the claim, and you deserve better than that from something you drink every night.
Settl is seven actives, seven printed doses, one scoop in cold water before bed. Check every number before you spend a dollar.
Start your nightly ritual, $99.95/mo, or $120 one-time if you'd rather not subscribe. Prices inc. GST.
Cheers, Roy