Official product information
Guides: How to Read a Blend That Does Not Want to Be Read
Three long reads from this desk, and the method underneath every page here: how to read a proprietary blend, what a federal page is, and the four-step rule for this product category.
Written and reviewed by the Maxforce Editorial Desk · Last updated October 29, 2026
Quick answer
Free reading, none of it about buying anything. Three posts on this product’s findings, then the method: a proprietary blend prints a sum and a running order, and one printed figure — caffeine at 5 mg — caps the four ingredients listed below it. Plus what a federal consumer page is and is not, and the four-step rule this desk follows for this category.
3 long reads, plus the method
What is on this page
Three posts, and four pieces of method you can carry to any supplement jar.
Three long reads sit on this site and none is about buying anything. Each takes one finding further than a product page has room for, and each is written to be useful on a jar you have never heard of. Underneath them, this page sets out the method: how to read a proprietary blend, why listing order is the most useful rule on a supplement label, what a federal consumer page is and is not, and the four-step construction this desk follows for the category FDA publishes notifications about.
The method is here rather than buried in a policy because Maxforce is an unusually clean demonstration of a general problem. Its dose arithmetic closes exactly, its front claims are correctly hedged and its panel is complete — and it still takes an ordering rule plus one printed figure to work out that four of its nine ingredients can be no more than 5 mg each.
3 posts, one per finding
Three posts from this desk
What 82 mg buys, how an ordering rule gives a blend away, and what the category pages say.
They can be read in any order, though the second is the one the others lean on.
What Eighty-Two Milligrams Buys
One number on a jar, nine ingredients sharing it, and the arithmetic that follows from a single printed figure.
It stays with the central finding: what 82 mg actually is, how nine ingredients come to share it, and what the 567 mg dry-powder footnote does and does not add. The last section sets the derived bounds beside the federal amounts — 5 mg or less of L-arginine against the two to twenty grams a day NIH ODS discusses.
The Descending Order Trick
Proprietary blends hide their amounts. A rule about listing order, plus one ingredient that carries its own figure, sometimes gives them away.
The method piece, worked on this jar. A blend may print one total and no individual amounts, which normally ends the conversation — but the members must be listed in descending order of predominance by weight, and this panel prints a figure beside its fifth member. The post walks the derivation from both ends, then shows why most blends give you nothing to work with.
What the Category Pages Say
NCCIH on supplements sold for sexual enhancement, FDA on hidden drug ingredients, and MedlinePlus on what erectile difficulty can mean.
The federal category pages, quoted rather than summarised: NCCIH’s conclusion on supplements sold for sexual enhancement in its own sentence, both of the conflicting tribulus terrestris trials it cites with the 5 mg cap printed beside them, and MedlinePlus on why erectile difficulty is worth taking to a doctor rather than to a shelf.
5 mg, the one printed amount
How to read a proprietary blend
A blend prints a sum and a running order. One itemised figure turns that into arithmetic.
A proprietary blend is a legitimate label construction, and it is worth saying so before criticising one. FDA’s labeling guide sets out what it must carry: “On the same line, you must list the total weight of all ‘other dietary ingredients’ contained in the blend.” And the part that matters most: “Indented underneath the name of the blend, you must list the ‘other dietary ingredients’ in the blend, either in a column or linear fashion, in descending order of predominance by weight.” Individual weights are not required. So a blend may tell you the sum and the running order and nothing else.
That is the trade: you get a sum and a sequence, the manufacturer keeps the proportions. On this jar the sum is 82 mg and the sequence is nine names long.
Why descending order is the most useful rule on a supplement label
Because it converts a list of names into a ranking, and a ranking plus one number is arithmetic rather than mystery. Each member weighs no more than the one above it — so the last name on a blend is the smallest thing in it, however impressive the name, and the first may be most of the blend.
What makes this panel unusual is that one member carries its own figure. Caffeine is the fifth of the nine and 5 mg is printed beside it. Apply the rule in both directions and the blend opens up:
Find a row that carries its own number
Most blends have none, and that is where the method stops. This one prints 5 mg beside caffeine, mid-list — the single most informative thing on the package, and the label deserves credit for printing it.
Everything listed below it is capped by it
Ashwagandha, L-arginine, tribulus terrestris and horny goat weed extract are rows six to nine, so each is 5 mg or less. Not approximately. At most. That is what the label says once the rule it was printed under is applied to it.
Everything above it is at least that much
Rows one to four account for at least 20 mg between them.
Subtract to cap the first row
82 mg total, less 5 mg for caffeine, less at least 5 mg each for rows two, three and four, leaves no more than 62 mg for muira puama extract — and since nine rows capped that way cannot total 82 mg if the first is under about 14 mg, the biggest ingredient here sits between about 14 mg and 62 mg.
One footnote is the label’s answer to all of that. The jar prints “equivalent to approximately 567mg of dry powders” — about 6.9 to 1 across the whole blend, with no per-ingredient ratio, so it applies to no single row. Even 567 mg split nine ways is about 63 mg each.
The long guide: how to read a proprietary blend, and when you can beat one →
22 federal pages cited on this site
What a federal page is, and what it is not
A dated public summary of the evidence. Not an approval, and not a verdict on a formula.
Every citation on this site is a federal consumer page, and the phrase gets used as a trump card in both directions, so it is worth being exact.
What a federal page is
A summary, written for the public by a US government body — NCCIH, NIH ODS, MedlinePlus or FDA — of what the published research currently supports. Dated, edited, free, and plain about thin evidence. NCCIH: “The amount of scientific evidence on dietary supplements varies widely—there is a lot of information on some and very little on others.” This desk quotes such pages verbatim and links each one.
What a federal page is not
It is not an approval of anything. FDA states the position directly: “Under DSHEA, FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed.” No supplement is reviewed for safety or effectiveness before it is sold, so nothing here describes Maxforce as approved, cleared, reviewed or verified — none of those words would be true of any product in this aisle.
It is also not a verdict on a formula. A page about ashwagandha is about ashwagandha, at the amounts and in the preparations the studies used; reading it as though it were about a gummy holding 5 mg or less inside an 82 mg blend is the commonest mistake in this category, and it is usually made in the product’s favour. Nor is the absence of a page a finding: five of the nine here have none, which means there is nothing authoritative to read.
And federal pages move. MedlinePlus’s herb database, the one federal-domain place a consumer could look several of these names up, was withdrawn on 29 July 2025. That is why a date matters here: it says which record was in front of the person writing.
4 steps, always in this order
The four-step rule for this product category
Describe the category, state the dated absence, quote the caveat, close on the action.
FDA publishes notifications about supplements sold for sexual enhancement that were found to contain undeclared prescription drug ingredients. A buyer deserves that context, and there is a right way to give it. This desk follows the same four steps, in this order, and never otherwise.
Describe the category, never the product
FDA’s own sentences keep the subject plural and generic, and so do these pages. FDA: “These products are typically promoted for sexual enhancement, weight loss, pain relief and body building and are often represented as being all natural.” The danger is specific: an undeclared ingredient of that kind “may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels”, and “People with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take nitrates.”
State the absence as a dated search result, and nothing more
A search of FDA’s Sexual Enhancement and Energy Product Notifications on September 25, 2026 did not return Maxforce. That is a statement about what a database contained on a date, and it is not a clearance.
Quote FDA’s caveat immediately, in the same breath
“FDA is unable to test and identify all products marketed as dietary supplements that have potentially harmful hidden ingredients.” Absence from a list is not the same as having been checked, and no test result for this product exists in the public record.
Close on the action, not on the reassurance
FDA: “Talk to a health care professional before buying or trying a new product for your health.” That matters more here than anywhere, because MedlinePlus notes that erectile difficulty “can be a sign of health problems” — clogged blood vessels, nerve damage from diabetes — and that “if you don’t see your doctor, these problems will go untreated.”
The order is fixed because steps two and three are useless apart. Alone, step two reads as a clean bill of health nobody issued. With step three it reads as what it is: one query, on one day, against a database FDA itself says is not exhaustive.
The long guide: supplements sold for male enhancement, and what the federal pages say →
6 modules, one jump link each
The six modules on the home page
The splitter, the list counter, the scale rail, the cost calculator, the label explorer and the fit check.
These arguments are worked out interactively on the home page. Six modules sit down that page, a jump link each.
The blend splitter takes the 82 mg apart row by row and shows the 5 mg ceiling and the 62 mg ceiling being derived from the ordering rule. The three-list counter sets the panel’s nine names against the pack text’s six and the marketing card’s five, and marks which four the card leaves out. The scale rail puts the derived bounds beside the amounts the federal pages describe — grams against milligrams, in one picture.
The cost calculator runs $79, $69 and $49 over a thirty-day jar at one gummy a day, and says in its caption that nothing supplied connects a price to a pack. The label explorer is the whole wrap transcribed panel by panel. And the fit check asks whether this jar is a reasonable purchase for you, which is a different question from whether the panel is well printed.
Questions
Maxforce FAQ: guides questions
Is there a proprietary blend?
Yes, and it is declared as one. FDA’s labeling guide allows it: a blend must print “the total weight of all ‘other dietary ingredients’ contained in the blend” and list the members “in descending order of predominance by weight”. Individual weights are not required.
Why do five of them have no federal page?
Because federal agencies write consumer pages for the botanicals most asked about. MedlinePlus’s own herb database, which used to cover several of them, was withdrawn on 29 July 2025. NCCIH notes that “The amount of scientific evidence on dietary supplements varies widely—there is a lot of information on some and very little on others.”
References
Sources for this page
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV, Nutrition Labeling. www.fda.gov. Accessed September 25, 2026.
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. Botanical Dietary Supplements: Background Information. ods.od.nih.gov. Accessed September 25, 2026.
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Dietary Supplements Marketed for Weight Loss, Bodybuilding, and Sexual Enhancement: What the Science Says. www.nccih.nih.gov. Accessed September 25, 2026.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sexual Enhancement and Energy Product Notifications. www.fda.gov. Accessed September 25, 2026.
See Maxforce on the official sales page
30 gummies a jar, one a day, thirty days a jar. A 82 mg proprietary blend of nine ingredients, one of which carries a figure of its own. 60 days from purchase to change your mind. Sales line +1 (302) 200-3480.
Price shown at checkout · 60-day window from the date of purchase · ships from inside the US · sales line +1 (302) 200-3480