Every step,on the record.

A vitamin can be assembled, or it can be grown.

A synthetic supplement supplies an isolated compound, synthesised in a plant and pressed into a tablet. On paper it matches the label exactly, because the label lists the compound.

A whole-food concentrate takes the food itself and concentrates it, so the compound arrives with the other constituents it grew alongside. An isolate gives you ascorbic acid. An orange gives you ascorbic acid plus the fibre, bioflavonoids and carotenoids it grew with.

There is a middle category too: one nutrient isolated from a natural source instead of made by chemical synthesis. Natural-source vitamin E, distilled out of vegetable oils, is the familiar example. It is the natural form, which matters — but it is still a single compound, not the food it came from.

Which of those you are holding is not usually obvious from the front of the bottle. It is the single most useful thing I learned.

Five screens, where the standard is one.

The industry norm is a potency test: is the active ingredient present, at the amount claimed. That is the whole check for most products on a shelf.

NeoLife publishes a five-part protocol for every batch of creatine. Alongside potency they screen for elevated creatinine — the breakdown product, whose presence means the creatine has already degraded — and for dicyandiamide and dihydrotriazine, two common manufacturing impurities, and for residual agricultural pesticides.

Four of those five are things you would never know to ask about. That is the point of publishing them: a company that lists the tests it runs has to keep running them.

Ten checkpoints, from the seed to the batch number.

NeoLife publishes a ten-point process for its whole-food ingredients, and it starts before anything is grown: the seed stock is selected, the fields are chosen for being in the least disturbed environments available, and the crops are monitored before they are harvested.

They are harvested when nutrient content is highest, tested again on the way to processing, and concentrated with as little processing as possible. Then every ingredient is held in quarantine — nothing is released for use until the lab has confirmed its purity and potency.

The finished batch is tested again and samples are kept. Every label carries a batch number that traces each ingredient back to where it started, so if you ever want to know where the contents of your bottle came from, that number is the question to ask.

The other half of a label.

GMO free, vegan, gluten free, no added sugar, and no artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners or preservatives.

Free from substances banned by the NCAA, IOC and WADA — which matters if you are tested, because it means you can take it without filing anything.

Not sold in retail stores. There is no reseller between the manufacturer and you, and no grey-market stock of unknown age sitting in a warehouse.

What I look at now, in order.

The source line before the quantity. A large number tells you how much of something is in there; it does not tell you where it came from or what came with it.

The form of each nutrient, because the same vitamin name covers several different chemical forms, and they are not interchangeable.

The other ingredients list, which is where the fillers, binders and coatings live and where a lot of the difference between two similar-looking products actually sits.