WhatToTrust™ Empowering Consumers with Science-Based Wellness Choices

By: Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk, PhD, MBA

Canomiks is thrilled to launch WhatToTrust™ – a first of its kind, no-cost, user-friendly platform designed to help consumers make confident, informed buying decisions about dietary supplements and wellness products. Through a transparent proprietary scoring system, we provide unbiased, science-based product evaluations, cutting through the marketing hype and buzzwords.

WhatToTrust™ is Canomiks' new consumer-facing platform, providing science-based evaluations of dietary supplements—including botanicals, vitamins, protein powders, drink mixes, and other common functional wellness products. Our mission is to empower you to choose wellness products based on solid scientific evidence and validation, not just catchy advertising and endorsements.

How Do We Score Products?
We evaluate individual ingredients and complete product formulations, assigning each product a WhatToTrust™ Score on a 1-10 scale. These scores are rooted in scientific evidence found on the brand's website, as well as publicly available scientific and clinical databases like PubMed and Clinicaltrials.gov.

Our WhatToTrust™ Scores are a direct reflection of a product's scientific backing. We assess:

  • Pre-clinical and clinical studies of ingredients and finished product.

  • "Borrowed science," which means brands citing relevant published research conducted by others.

  • Standard FDA-quality testing for the identity, purity, strength, and composition of ingredients, as well as testing finished products for contaminants and ensuring they match the label.

At the individual ingredient level, synthetic compounds such as Vitamin C, Magnesium, or Vitamin D typically receive top scores, even without specific company-cited studies. Branded ingredients with robust pre-clinical and clinical testing also earn top marks at this level. If all the ingredients are clinically tested at the individual ingredient level, but the whole formulation/product is not, the product still cannot receive a perfect score. To achieve a perfect score of 10, the whole formulation must be tested by human clinical trials.

Learn more about our WhatToTrust™ proprietary scoring methodology


Science Paves the Way to Efficacy Validation and Trust
As the demand for dietary supplements continues to soar, so does the need for clarity. Since the passage of DSHEA in 1994, the dietary supplement industry has grown tremendously, with some reports estimating at least 75% of U.S. adults take supplements.

While there's been a recent shift towards greater transparency, efficacy, and scientific validation, a significant gap persists: the lack of centralized, accessible consumer education about nutraceuticals and their underlying science. In the natural products and nutraceutical industry, critical discussions around product efficacy, information transparency, consumer education, and trust have been a constant presence. These topics are frequently highlighted in recent years through trade publications, podcasts, and sessions at industry conferences and trade shows.

New products hit the market almost daily, making it challenging for consumers to navigate their options and find trustworthy information. We've all heard someone say, "I just don't know what to trust" when it comes to supplements. Even industry experts admit it can be difficult to evaluate which products are truly science-backed. During our development, we frequently found that supporting research wasn't easily accessible, clearly linked to claims, or sometimes, entirely absent.

That's precisely why we created WhatToTrust™. Our platform is a centralized, easy-to-use resource that empowers consumers to make informed, evidence-based supplement and wellness choices by transparently highlighting the science behind wellness products.

Many healthcare providers I know have been hesitant to recommend brands lacking visible, credible studies. WhatToTrust™ provides a reliable tool, enabling providers to confidently guide their patients toward safe and effective supplement options. This is the crucial gap WhatToTrust™ is designed to fill.

At “Consumers need alternatives to the mainstream narrative that nutraceutical products are unregulated, untested, and unsafe, so providing consumers with product ratings based upon clinical evidence is an excellent counter to that fallacy,” said Elan Sudberg, CEO of Alkemist Labs, a top botanical and fungi testing laboratory. “Highlighting ingredient as well as finished product quality is essentially what I have been preaching for years. This is exactly the kind of program Alkemist supports because we believe consumers deserve transparency.”

Additional Features WhatToTrust™ Offers:

  • Consumer Guide to Dietary Supplements: Comprehensive information to help you understand the landscape.

  • Product Comparison: Easily compare products side-by-side, including descriptions of their bioactives.

  • Category Search: Find products by popular wellness categories such as Women’s Health, Children’s Health, and Mental Health.

  • Consumer Insights: Access helpful articles of interest available to all WhatToTrust™ users and visitors.Our Vision
    When my co-founders and I launched Canomiks, we initially considered creating our own supplement line. However, we quickly realized our greatest impact wouldn't come from launching new products, but from helping make the entire supplement space more evidence-based and transparent. While our primary focus at Canomiks is helping companies scientifically develop and validate natural products, we also want to simplify complex scientific information for consumers.

With WhatToTrust™, we're aiming for more than just smarter consumer choices. We want to support a broader shift in the wellness industry toward scientific validation, integrity, and accountability. Our long-term vision is to make science-backed, evidence-based decision-making the norm, not the exception.

We built WhatToTrust™ because people deserve better – better products, better access to information, better tools, and ultimately, better health outcomes. Let’s work together to raise the bar for what people expect, and what they can trust, when it comes to their health. Let's make "Food as Medicine" a reality.