So you’ve decided to try CBD. Awesome! Now you just need to find the right product for you. There are thousands of products and brands out there, and due to being an unregulated market, the labels are often confusing or misleading. This is a quick guide on how to read and understand the labels on CBD products.
First and foremost, the best advice we can give on this subject is to make sure that whatever product you purchase has been tested by a third-party laboratory to verify the claims made on the label. You can become an expert at reading the terms they use, but unfortunately there are still many companies out there that intentionally mislabel their products. For example, some companies will claim to have no THC in their products, but will not actually test them to verify that claim. This could be dangerous for people who need to pass drug tests and are mistakenly led to believe that they are not consuming THC. This is why we at Discover CBD send every single batch of every single product for analysis by a third-party lab, and post all of those lab results on our website. This transparency is important to us because we want you to know exactly what you are getting when you purchase our products.
We’ll start with tinctures, colloquially known as "drops", which are generally the most common CBD products that you’ll find. Tincture labels should include (at the bare minimum) all 4 of the following pieces of information:
- This will be a number (usually in the hundreds or thousands), with “mg” next to it. This number is the total amount of CBD in the bottle, NOT the amount of CBD in each dose. All of our tinctures including our water soluble broad-spectrum tinctures, have a diagram of the dropper on the back of the label to show you how much CBD is in each dropper. The diagram will tell you how many mg of CBD are at each 1/4 ml increment so you can easily determine how much CBD you are getting! Most tinctures will say that the recommended dose is the full 1 ml dropper however many people often start with lower doses and gradually increase as needed until they find their optimal dose.
- This is measured in ounces (oz), milliliters (mL), or both. This number is important because it can be used in conjunction with the CBD content to determine the concentration, or strength, of the product. For example, two different tinctures could both list “1000mg” on the label, but if one has a smaller volume than the other, it will be more concentrated and therefore “stronger.”
- Just like any other product you put in your body, you want to know exactly what's in it. If you saw a food item at the grocery store with no list of ingredients, you would probably be a little hesitant to eat that mystery "food", because anything could be in it. The same logic applies to CBD products.
4. A QR code and corresponding batch number
- Discover CBD was one of the first CBD companies to implement a QR code on our product label that you can easily scan with a smart phone camera to pull up the link of our Active CBD Oil webpage where we have every third party lab results posted for each corresponding batch code. Most of our tinctures will look something like TIN-1114 for our Active CBD Oil 900 mg Full Spectrum tincture. Every batch is tested for its cannabinoid profile so you can know exactly how much CBD is in your batch as well as any other cannabinoids like delta 9 THC that will have less than 0.3% or less in a full spectrum product and ND or nondetectable amounts in a broad spectrum or CBD isolate based product.
If a product does not have all 4 of these on the label, be wary of it and seriously consider walking away and looking at a different brand. This means that either the company is not willing to disclose that information, or that they do not actually know that information. Either of these should be huge red flags. The quality of the label is also a good indicator of whether or not a brand is trustworthy. If a label looks like it was typed out on a laptop and printed on cheap sticker paper from a home-printer, it would be wise to question the credibility of that brand.
How to read a lab report
- The batch code designates a specific sample of product.
- The date is important as it needs to be an up to date report.
- The cannabinoid totals will give you the total amount of each cannabinoid detected. If none was detected, it will be listed as 0.00%. The total amount is for the sample size.
- It is important to know the sample size as that will help you determine the total amount of cannabinoids in the product.
- The margin of error allows for variance.
- Lab credentials are important to verify the lab used in the reports are legitimate and reputable. The report should include contact information for the lab in case there are any issues with the report.
What do all of these badges mean?
cGMP
This is an acronym for Current Good Manufacturing Practice which is used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a regulatory standard for ensuring quality of products by requiring the manufacturers to adequately control operations.
ISO-7
This is one level below the highest of quality standards for clean rooms designed to provide a clean, safe, enclosed room to manufacture products in. ISO-7 clean room is a hard-sided wall manufactured facility that utilizes high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration systems to maintain air cleanliness levels of a maximum of 10,000 particles (≥0.5µm) per cubic foot.
Independently 3rd Party Lab Tested
As mentioned before we send out every batch we make for third party to test the cannabinoid profile for every product. We then post every batch on our Active CBD Oil webpage so everyone can easily see how much CBD is in their product. This is especially useful when trying to avoid THC as well as these lab reports will indicate if the product contains even the trace amounts of 0.3% or less or not.
Colorado Company
Discover CBD is based in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado and that is where our warehouse with our ISO-7 certified clean room is that me manufacture our Active CBD Oil and Strain Snobs brands.
Made in the U.S
We are a U.S company that while based in Colorado, we ship through USPS to all 50 states!
