Herbal Blue: what the label actually tells you

Herbal Blue is a blue 100 mg tablet sold in the UK, mostly through marketplaces, and it turns up alongside ours often enough that it is worth doing to it what we would want done to our own carton: reading the label in order, writing down what is declared and what is not, and separating the two.

Nothing below says what either tablet does. Nothing lawfully could - none of the botanicals in either product holds an authorised health claim in Great Britain.† What can be put side by side is the printed information: the ingredient list, the milligrams, the species names, the warnings, the codes, and the price per tablet. On those, the two packs are noticeably different documents. Every Herbal Blue detail here was taken from its own listings on 26 July 2026, and where a figure is absent this piece says so rather than filling the gap.

Is there more than one product called Herbal Blue?

Start with the name, because it identifies less than you would expect. The pack most people mean is Vegron Herbal Blue, a blue tablet sold on Amazon UK in cartons of 10, 20 and 30, marked 100 MG on the front, dispatched by Amazon and sold by RONLY HEALTH Limited. That is the product the rest of this piece reads.

The other Herbal Blue, and why a name is not an identifier

A different product, Herbal Blue Complex, is sold by the UK retailer Best Health in packs of 2, 10, 20, 40 and 60. It is a 300 mg capsule rather than a 100 mg tablet, and its declared ingredients are microcrystalline cellulose, oyster meat, L-arginine AKG, turmeric powder, bee pollen powder, 'Bioprene' powder and 'Zine' gluconate - the last two spelled as printed on the page. Not one ingredient appears on both lists. Two products, one name, nothing in common.

Two things in that second list are worth a moment, because they are the sort of thing the order of an ingredient list is designed to tell you. Microcrystalline cellulose is a bulking agent, and it is listed first, which under the heaviest-first rule makes it the largest single component of the capsule. And oyster meat is a mollusc. Molluscs are one of the fourteen allergens that UK food law requires to be identified, so anyone with a shellfish allergy needs that word to be findable rather than buried mid-sentence.

The practical consequence is simple. A review of 'Herbal Blue' that does not say which Herbal Blue is a review of nothing, and a search result that puts the two next to each other is not comparing like with like. Before comparing anything, note the brand, the format, the strength on the front and the pack size. Those four together identify the product. The two words on the front do not.

Pinning a pack down is not difficult once you decide to do it. On a marketplace the product code beneath the listing - the ASIN on Amazon, the item number on eBay - is the only unambiguous handle, and it is the thing to quote if you ever need to raise a query about the pack you received. On a retailer's own site there is usually no such code, so the brand plus the format plus the pack size plus the declared strength is the best available substitute. Write those down before you read a word of the description. Names in this category are reused freely, sometimes by unconnected sellers, and a name on its own is not an identifier.

What amounts does the Herbal Blue label declare?

Credit where it is due. The Vegron listing does declare a figure for each active, which is more than most packs in this aisle manage. Its Supplements Facts panel gives, per serving: Avena Sativa Extract 10:1 at 180 mg, Cordyceps at 140 mg, Zinc Citrate at 70 mg, Ginseng Extract at 250 mg, Tribulus Terrestris Fruit Extract at 100 mg and Maca Extract at 100 mg, followed by the bulking and anti-caking agents. That is not a proprietary blend, where one large total is printed and the split between the plants behind it is withheld. Six named substances with six numbers is the right shape for a label.

840 mg of declared ingredients in a tablet marked 100 MG

Add the six figures up and the shape stops working. They total 840 mg per serving, before the bulking agents that hold the tablet together, on a pack whose front panel reads 100 MG and whose product title reads 100mg. Eight hundred and forty milligrams of declared ingredients will not fit inside a hundred-milligram tablet. One of those two numbers is describing something other than what a reader would assume, and the listing does not say which. It does not define what the 100 mg refers to, and it does not state a serving size or the number of servings in the pack - the panel is headed 'Amount/serving' and leaves the serving undefined.

There is a second disagreement inside the same listing. One of the listing's own graphics repeats the six ingredients with amounts, and gives Tribulus Terrestris Extract as 80 mg where the Supplements Facts panel gives 100 mg. Everything else matches. So the listing publishes two different tribulus figures and two different totals - 840 mg on one image, 820 mg on the other - a few scroll-lengths apart.

Then there is the order. UK rules put ingredients in descending order of weight, which is what makes the position of a name in a list informative at a glance. Read the Vegron panel in the order printed and it runs 180, 140, 70, 250, 100, 100. Ginseng Extract is the largest declared amount on the list and it appears fourth. Zinc citrate, at 70 mg the smallest, appears third. The list is not in weight order, so its order carries no information, and the numbers are doing all the work.

Adding a panel up is a habit worth keeping, and it takes about fifteen seconds. Sum the declared amounts and compare the result with whatever number the front of the pack is shouting. The two should either match or have an obvious relationship - the front figure being the botanical total, say, with the excipients making up the rest of the tablet weight. When they cannot be reconciled at all, one of the two was written by somebody who was not looking at the other. The same arithmetic catches the opposite trick, where a large front-of-pack figure turns out to be the weight of the whole tablet including its bulking agents, most of which is not the plant anybody came for.

None of this proves anything about what is in the tablet. It is entirely possible that the carton in the box is correct and that the online panel was assembled carelessly from a supplier's specification sheet. But a buyer standing at the listing cannot tell which figure is the label figure, and that is a fair thing to want to know before paying. The check is available to anyone: ask the seller which of the two tribulus figures is printed on the carton, and what the 100 mg on the front refers to. A brand that has the paperwork answers in one line.

What does the Herbal Blue label get right, and what does it leave out?

It would be easy to write only the shortfalls, so here is the other half. The listing declares its excipients by name and by function - di-calcium phosphate as a bulking agent, silicon dioxide and vegetable-origin stearic acid as anti-caking agents - rather than hiding them behind 'other ingredients'. It publishes a storage instruction: store in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight and out of reach of children. It carries an allergen statement, a food-supplement disclaimer, an instruction not to exceed the stated dose, an eighteen-and-over restriction and a list of conditions on which a reader should speak to a doctor first. The stated ceiling is one tablet in any 24-hour period, which is the same ceiling we print. That is a fuller set of warnings than a good deal of this category bothers with.

The Avena Sativa entry also carries an extract ratio, 10:1, meaning ten parts of raw plant reduced to one part of extract. That is genuinely useful information and most labels omit it. It does not, on its own, produce a comparable number - a 10:1 extract at 180 mg and a whole-plant powder at 180 mg are different materials - but printing the ratio is the more honest move.

Which ginseng, which maca, which cordyceps

Three of the six entries name a plant without naming the species. 'Ginseng Extract' does not say which ginseng: Panax ginseng, American ginseng, Siberian ginseng and Indian ginseng are four unrelated plants sharing one English word. 'Maca Extract' does not give Lepidium meyenii. 'Cordyceps' is a genus, not a species, and it is also a fungus rather than a botanical, which is worth knowing on a pack described as a botanical blend. Avena Sativa and Tribulus Terrestris are proper binomials, so the label is capable of printing them; it just does not do it consistently.

Zinc citrate is the one entry where a percentage should be possible and is not printed. Zinc is a mineral with a Nutrient Reference Value, and UK rules ask for the amount of the nutrient itself alongside a percentage of that reference figure. The panel gives 70 mg of zinc citrate, which is the weight of the salt rather than the weight of the zinc in it, and no percentage at all. The honest footnote used for botanicals - that no reference value exists - does not apply here, because for zinc one does.

The allergen statement is worth putting to the seller as well. The listing states that the product contains none of the fourteen major food allergens, and it also declares Avena sativa, which is the oat. Oats are named in the UK allergen list under cereals containing gluten. There may be a good explanation involving the extract and its specification; there may not. Either way it is a question with a documented answer, and a buyer with coeliac disease should ask it before ordering rather than after.

The batch code, the certificate and the address that are missing

Finally, the paperwork. The listing publishes no batch code, no route to a Certificate of Analysis, no testing laboratory, no accreditation, and no name and address for the food business operator - the entity that UK food information rules make responsible for what the label says. Amazon's manufacturer field reads 'Vegron', and a search of the Companies House register on 26 July 2026 returns no company of that name; the seller of record is RONLY HEALTH Limited, company number 15106923, incorporated on 31 August 2023, registered at 2 Frederick Street, Kings Cross, London WC1X 0ND. That is a seller registration, not a label declaration, and the two are not the same thing. It is where a complaint would go, not where the label's accuracy is guaranteed. It is very likely the physical carton carries an address and a batch code, because it has to. The finding is narrower and still worth having: none of it is published where the decision to buy is actually made, and the listing's photographs show the front of the pack and a designed panel, not the printed back.

That last gap matters more than it looks, because the batch code is the thread everything else hangs from. A Certificate of Analysis is issued against one production run, and for a botanical product it typically confirms the identity of each plant, tests for heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic, runs microbiological checks and confirms the physical specification of the tablet. Without a code identifying which run your pack came from, a certificate is a document about somebody else's tablets. With one, it is a record about yours. Ours are printed on the blister foil next to the best-before date, and quoting the code to hello@maleup.co.uk returns the certificate for that run. The test of any brand, including this one, is whether that request gets answered.

How do Herbal Blue and AllMaleUp compare on the label?

Here is the comparison, restricted to things printed rather than things claimed. AllMaleUp figures are our own; Herbal Blue figures are as published on its listings on 26 July 2026, with 'not published' meaning we looked and did not find it.

Point of comparison	Herbal Blue (Vegron)	AllMaleUp
Amount declared per ingredient	Yes - six figures published	Yes - six figures published
Declared amounts	Ginseng 250 mg, Avena sativa 180 mg (10:1), Cordyceps 140 mg, Tribulus 100 mg (80 mg on a second graphic), Maca 100 mg, Zinc citrate 70 mg	Ginseng 25 mg, Maca 25 mg, Tribulus 20 mg, Guarana 10 mg, Ashwagandha 10 mg, Catuaba 10 mg
Total declared per tablet	840 mg by the panel, 820 mg by the graphic; front of pack reads 100 MG; not reconciled	100 mg, and the six figures add to it
Latin binomials	Partial - Avena sativa and Tribulus terrestris given; ginseng, maca and cordyceps not identified to species	All six - Panax ginseng, Lepidium meyenii, Tribulus terrestris, Paullinia cupana, Withania somnifera, Trichilia catigua
Proprietary blend or full disclosure	Full disclosure attempted; the published figures do not agree with each other	Full disclosure
Mineral declared as %NRV	No - zinc citrate given as the salt, no percentage	Not applicable - no vitamins or minerals in the tablet
Caffeine declared	No caffeine-bearing ingredient is declared, so no figure is given	Under 5 mg per tablet, from guarana seed
Batch code	Not published on the listing	Printed on the blister foil with the best-before date
Certificate of Analysis	No route published	On request by batch code, to hello@maleup.co.uk
Testing laboratory	Not published	Accredited to ISO/IEC 17025
Storage instruction printed	Yes	Yes
Maximum stated dose	One tablet in any 24-hour period	One tablet in any 24-hour period
Pack sizes	10, 20, 30	20, 40, 60
Price per tablet	£1.00 (10 from £9.99), £0.95 (20 at £18.99), £0.77 (30 from £22.99)	£0.75 (20 at £14.95), £0.62 (40 at £24.95), £0.58 (60 at £34.95)

Price per tablet is the only fair way to read the money, and it is the figure marketplaces make hardest to see. Divide and the ladders are clear enough: Herbal Blue runs from £1.00 down to about £0.77 a tablet across its three sizes, ours from £0.75 down to about £0.58 across three larger ones. Prices move, and both sets were checked on 26 July 2026, so treat them as a method rather than a permanent fact - the arithmetic is what matters, not the numbers.

What a price per tablet cannot tell you is what you are buying per tablet, which is why it belongs at the bottom of the table rather than the top. Two tablets at the same price can carry very different quantities of very different material, and until the milligram figures reconcile there is no honest way to convert either pack into value. That is the whole argument for insisting on the numbers first.

A label is a document that either survives being checked or does not. On the evidence published, Herbal Blue's does some things properly - it names its excipients, prints its warnings, gives an extract ratio and puts a figure against every active - and then trips over its own arithmetic, leaves three plants unidentified to species, and keeps the batch code and the certificate off the page where the buying happens. Ours will not be perfect either, and the same test applies: read it, add it up, and if something does not reconcile, ask. If nobody answers, you have your answer.

Common questions

† Describes the traditional use of these botanicals (UK 'on-hold' botanical claims under retained Regulation (EC) 1924/2006). Not authorised EFSA health claims. AllMaleUp is a food supplement, not a medicine.