We Checked the Labels on 48 Mushroom Supplements: What They Do and Don’t Tell You

We checked the product pages of 48 mushroom supplements from six brands and recorded what each one does and does not tell you: which part of the mushroom is in the bottle, whether a beta-glucan figure is published, whether a certificate of analysis is available, whether the extraction method is named, whether fillers are declared, and what a serving actually costs.

This is a study of disclosure, not of laboratory content. Nothing was assayed. We are measuring what brands are willing to tell you before you buy — which turns out to vary enormously.

What we found

Half the products name the part of the mushroom used

25 of 48 (52%) state they use 100% fruiting body. 13 (27%) disclose mycelium grown on grain — typically written on the label as “mycelium/fermented brown rice biomass”, which means a portion of what you are buying is the rice it was grown on. Six products describe a mixture, one is mycelium without grain, and three do not say at all.

Worth saying plainly: disclosing mycelium-on-grain is not dishonest. Naming it on the Supplement Facts panel, as Host Defense does, is more transparent than the products that simply say “organic mushroom” and leave you guessing.

Fewer than half publish a beta-glucan number

22 of 48 (46%) state a beta-glucan figure. Where a percentage is given it runs from 8% to 40%, median 29%.

The distinction that matters here is beta-glucans versus polysaccharides. One product in the study is standardised to “7% Polysaccharides which are packed with Alpha and Beta Glucans” — a polysaccharide figure with no beta-glucan number attached. Starch is a polysaccharide, so a polysaccharide percentage can be inflated by the very grain filler a buyer is trying to avoid. We recorded that product as not disclosing.

Under a third publish a certificate of analysis

14 of 48 (29%) link or display a COA on the product page. The remaining 34 show no lab report and no offer to provide one on request.

Most name an extraction method — but a fifth of the field says nothing

28 of 48 (58%) name a method: hot water (16), triple-extracted (5), dual (6), and one page that asserts two different methods in different places. 20 products say nothing at all about how the extract was made.

“No fillers” is the easiest claim to make, and nearly everyone makes it

37 of 48 (77%) explicitly state they contain no fillers, grain or starch. It is the most commonly made claim in the study and also the cheapest — it costs nothing to assert and almost nobody publishes a test that would confirm it. Read it alongside the source and beta-glucan disclosures rather than on its own.

The most transparent brand is also the most expensive — but that is not a rule

Cost per serving runs from $0.13 to $1.40 — a 10.5x spread, median $0.67. We could work it out for 46 of the 48 products; the other two do not publish enough to compute it. Nothing else in this study varies that much, and it is the one difference you feel every month.

Here is the finding we did not expect, and the one we would ask you to weigh most carefully given our disclosure above. Ranked by median price per serving:

Brand	Median $/serving
Double Wood	$0.16
Terrasoul	$0.20
Laird Superfood	$0.56
FreshCap	$0.67
Host Defense	$0.70
Real Mushrooms	$0.74

Real Mushrooms — the brand we are affiliated with — is the most expensive per serving in the study, roughly 4.6x the cheapest. It also scored highest on every disclosure measure. It would suit us to let those two facts imply a rule, so here is what the numbers actually say: across all 46 priced products the relationship between price and disclosure is weak (a correlation of +0.13 between price per serving and the number of disclosure criteria met), and with Real Mushrooms set aside it is weaker still (+0.05). The five most expensive products in the study each meet exactly one of the five criteria.

What the data does support is narrower, and more useful to you at the shelf. The cheapest quarter of the study discloses least, by a wide margin — averaging one criterion of five, against about three for everything priced above it. Past that floor, paying more buys you very little. Read price as a real signal at the bottom of the range, and as a weak one above it. If your priority is cost per serving, the data points elsewhere.

One caveat belongs right next to that finding. These figures price each product at the size its brand lists first, which is what most buyers see. Priced instead at each product’s largest available pack, the ranking shifts: Real Mushrooms works out at $0.63 a serving and sits mid-field, below Host Defense ($0.65) and FreshCap ($0.67). What survives both ways of counting is the gap to the cheap end — Real Mushrooms costs roughly four times what Double Wood or Terrasoul do per serving either way. We are pointing this out because the second reading is the one that flatters the brand we earn from.

How the brands compare

Brand	n	Fruiting body	Beta-glucan figure	COA on page	Extraction named
Real Mushrooms	12	12	12	12	12
Host Defense	15	0	0	0	5
FreshCap	11	11	10	0	9
Terrasoul	5	2	0	0	2
Laird Superfood	3	0	0	0	0
Double Wood	2	0	0	2	0

12 of 48 products (25%) clear all three of fruiting body, a published beta-glucan figure, and a COA on the page. All twelve are Real Mushrooms products. We are affiliated with that brand, so treat this particular result with appropriate scepticism and read the limitations below — the criteria we chose are also, not coincidentally, the things that brand campaigns on.

The full dataset

Every product we checked, with what we recorded. Collected 27 July 2026.

Limitations — please read these before citing us

• Six brands is not the market. We sampled brands whose full catalogue is publicly enumerable, so that anyone can reproduce our sample. Nootropics Depot, Om, Oriveda, Mushroom Wisdom and Four Sigmatic are absent for that reason, not because of anything about their products.
• Host Defense is over-represented at 15 of 48 products, because its catalogue is large. Read the per-brand table before the pooled percentages.
• Prices move. Every figure here was taken from the merchant’s own product page on the date above, at the default pack size. Bigger packs usually work out cheaper per serving.
• We chose the criteria, and we are an affiliate of one brand in the study. The six measures are defensible — they are what the clinical literature and the extraction chemistry point to — but they also align with one brand’s marketing. A different reasonable analyst could choose differently and get a different winner.
• “Not disclosed” means we could not find it on the product page. It does not mean the product lacks the property. A brand may test thoroughly and simply not publish.
• This measures disclosure, not content. No product was independently laboratory tested. A published number is a claim, not a verification.

How we did it

The methodology was written and fixed before any data was collected, so the criteria could not be adjusted to suit a result. Each product page was fetched and every recorded value stored with the verbatim quote supporting it; anything without a supporting quote was recorded as not disclosed.

Two categories were added mid-study and are disclosed rather than applied quietly: triple, for products described as “triple-extracted”, which our original categories could not represent; and contradictory, for one page asserting two different extraction methods.

What this means when you are shopping

The useful takeaway is not a brand name, it is a habit. Before you buy, look for four things on the page: the part of the mushroom used, a beta-glucan figure rather than a polysaccharide one, a certificate of analysis you can actually open, and a named extraction method. On this evidence, roughly a quarter of products give you all of that — and the ones that do tend to charge for it.

If a page gives you none of those, that is information too. It does not mean the product is bad. It means you are being asked to take it on trust.

Related Reading

• Mushroom Tincture vs Powder
• How to Read a Mushroom Supplement COA
• How to Choose a Mushroom Supplement — the 7-point checklist built from these findings
• FDA Warning & GRAS Loophole: What Consumers Need to Know
• The Best Mushroom Supplements of 2026
• Best Lion’s Mane Supplements (2026)
• Best Cordyceps Supplements (2026)
• Best Reishi Supplements (2026)
• The Beta-Glucan Quality Gap — deep dive into why beta-glucan concentration varies
• Mushroom Supplement Market in 2026 — industry trends shaping supplement quality

Medical disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult your healthcare provider before starting any supplement. AdvancedMycoTech may earn a commission from affiliate links at no extra cost to you.