Direct-to-consumer buyers are more clinically informed than ever. They are increasingly looking beyond marketing claims, reading PubMed abstracts and scrutinising the evidence behind the ingredients they buy. They understand the distinction between "clinically studied ingredient" and "clinically studied dose,” and are unwilling to accept claims that blur the two.
Proprietary blends that obscure individual quantities, “research-backed” claims based primarily on animal or in vitro studies and ingredient lists that rely on traditional-use evidence rather than human clinical trials can all undermine consumer trust.
Three recent ingredient examples are instructive here: not because the ingredients themselves are unusual but because they demonstrate what “the evidence isn’t there yet” can mean in practice.
NMN
Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) has been one of the most heavily marketed longevity ingredients in recent years. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, collected the available human data on NMN and glucose and lipid metabolism. It found no significant effect on fasting glucose, HbA1c or any measured lipid marker.1
A separate multicentre, dose-dependent RCT in healthy middle-aged adults reported other positive signals — mainly around NAD+ levels — during short study periods.2 But a pooled result of "no significant effect" on the metabolic outcomes that people actually buy the ingredient for is not the same as a body of evidence that supports a metabolic-health claim.
According to Johnny, that distinction — an interesting mechanism versus a replicated/consistent clinical effect — is exactly the one brands need to start being explicit about.
Shilajit
The literature supporting purified shilajit is even thinner. The most-cited human trial is a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Andrologia that only had 75 completers (men aged 45–55).3 The study found a significant increase in total and free testosterone during the 90-day study.
Although this is a real trial with a genuine result, it’s from a single research group and one narrow population … and hasn't been independently replicated at scale.
Johnny says that most of what circulates about shilajit beyond that trial is Ayurvedic tradition and secondary commentary that is purported as clinical consensus. In his view, one well-run trial is reason to keep watching the ingredient, not to build a general claim on it.
Lion's Mane
Mechanistically, Hericium erinaceus is one of the more interesting compounds in the nootropic category and the trial pipeline is improving. 
But the most recent data undercuts the hype rather than supporting it: a 2025 double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled crossover study in Frontiers in Nutrition gave 18 healthy young adults a single 3 g dose and found no significant overall improvement in cognition or mood versus placebo.4
Johnny adds that further RCTs are now moving through preprint and chronic-dosing data may yet tell a different story. But, in his view, a brand selling Lion's Mane today is marketing ahead of what its own best current trial shows.
Transparency as a competitive advantage
For Proco and Johnny, this does not imply that NMN, shilajit or Lion's Mane are fraudulent, nor that their vendors operate in bad faith. Rather, Johnny says it highlights an industry trend in which preliminary single studies are used as a proxy for robust, replicated human clinical evidence at specific dosages — a gap consumers are increasingly recognising.
The fix isn't complicated and doesn't require regulatory intervention to start. Johnny stresses that brands should publish the dosage rather than just the ingredient and state whether a cited trial used that specific formulation, dose and delivery form. Marketing copy should clearly distinguish between “a trial exists” and “the evidence is consistent.” If an ingredient doesn’t clear that bar, then company’s should announce this publicly.
At Proco, notes Johnny, “we built our range around a simple principle: if a peer-reviewed human trial doesn't support an ingredient at the dose we use, we don't put our name behind it.” This allows the company to stand behind every ingredient it sells, with each one evaluated at the specific dose used in its products.
Proco’s single-ingredient products and one of its three blends are already labelled down to the milligram. The other two blends name every ingredient, Johnny says, but are still being dosed individually, one ingredient at a time, rather than assigning quantities before those doses have been confirmed.
From his perspective, brands that get ahead of this now — publishing what they rejected and why, not just what they sell — will be the ones left standing when full dose disclosure stops being a differentiator and becomes the baseline customers expect.
Manufacturers and ingredient suppliers who make that documentation easy to produce, rather than treating it as a competitive secret, will gain a real advantage in the coming years. The ones who don't will be explaining the gap to a customer base that has already done the reading.
