TARE no longer sells a colostrum product.
We audited our supplier and two products did not survive it. First Food, the colostrum, was one of them. The reason is a single sentence: no lot from either supplier carries a finished-product immunoglobulin assay. Not a low result and not a failed one — the test is not run and the row does not exist. The multiplication this article is built around ends, on our own jar and on every jar we could buy from, in a specification rather than a measurement — so the product left the range in August 2026 rather than stay on a shelf behind a number nobody could check.
The article stays up, and every figure that described our own jar has come out of it: the serving weight, the price, the lot code, the certificate rows and the facility claim. What is left is the part that was never about us — the multiplication itself, and what to ask of anyone still selling one. The full account of what we retired, and why, is on Testing & Certification.
Know exactly what a morning scoop contains. That is the entire promise of a well-built colostrum label, and it is available to almost nobody, because most jars print one number when the answer requires two.
Here is the multiplication that separates a measured product from an unmeasured one, and how to run colostrum daily once you can do it.
A colostrum label has two numbers, and most jars give you one
The first number is total colostrum per serving. Grams or milligrams of colostrum powder in a scoop. This is the number in big type on the front of the jar.
The second number is standardised immunoglobulin G content. The percentage of that powder that is IgG — the dominant immunoglobulin in bovine colostrum, and the compound the athletic research is built around.
Total colostrum without an IgG specification tells you how much powder is in the scoop. It tells you nothing about what is in the powder.
Do the multiplication yourself
The arithmetic is one line and it changes how the shelf looks.
Take the milligrams. Multiply by the IgG percentage. That is your actual IgG per serving.
A jar printing 2,000 mg at 20% IgG gives you 400 mg a scoop. A jar printing 6,000 mg with no percentage gives you a number you cannot use. That is the whole exercise.
Now run it on us, because it is why this article has changed twice. Our own colostrum printed a milligram figure and an IgG percentage until 31 July 2026. That percentage was a specification — our manufacturer's own product specification, the thing we ordered and paid for — and it was not a test result. We asked for an assay that would make it one and did not get it, so the percentage came off the label while the product was still being sold. A second manufacturer gave the same answer in August 2026, and the product came off the range instead. Keep that in mind for the rest of this article: the multiplication is still the right thing to run, and what it gives you is a specification rather than a measurement.
Now try it on a jar advertising 6,000 mg of colostrum with no IgG figure anywhere on the panel. You can't. The IgG content could be anything, and you have no way to find out — and neither does the brand selling it, unless they wrote a specification and had it verified. If they had, they would be printing it, because it is the most flattering number a colostrum brand can print.
A bigger milligram number with no percentage next to it is not a stronger product. It is an unmeasured one.
Why IgG content varies so wildly between jars
Colostrum is the first milk a cow produces after calving, and its composition changes by the hour. IgG concentration peaks immediately after birth and falls steeply over the following day or two as colostrum transitions into ordinary milk.
So the IgG fraction of a finished powder depends on when it was collected, how much of the collection window was included, and how the liquid was handled afterwards. Immunoglobulins are heat-sensitive proteins — aggressive heat treatment degrades them, which makes processing method as consequential as sourcing.
This is why a standardised IgG percentage is a categorically different statement from a claim about how the cows were fed. One is a specification the manufacturer has committed the powder to. The other describes what the cow ate.
Both can be true. Only one is a number — and a specification stays a specification until somebody assays a lot against it. That is the second half of this and it is where most of the category, us included, has had to stop.
Why IgG is the number worth reading
Because it is the fraction the research is actually about.
The most developed line of colostrum work in athletic populations concerns the intestinal barrier. The background physiology is well established and uncontroversial: hard exercise, particularly prolonged exercise or exercise in the heat, transiently increases intestinal permeability. Blood is shunted away from the gut toward working muscle and skin, and the barrier gets measurably leakier for a period around the session. It is a normal, temporary response to hard physical work, and it is one reason hard-training men so often report gut trouble in long or hot efforts.
Bovine colostrum has been studied repeatedly against markers of that response, in small trials and in systematic reviews, and it is the area where the findings have pointed most consistently in one direction. It is why researchers keep coming back to colostrum in trained populations rather than to something else.
That is the fraction the work was done on. The IgG percentage is how a reader finds out whether the jar in their hand carries a meaningful amount of it — and a panel that prints no percentage has answered a different question from the one being asked.
So what should you actually take?
The honest position, stated once and without hand-wringing: the published research spans a wide range of doses, on different populations, over different durations, against different endpoints, and it has not converged on a single figure for a healthy, hard-training adult. Anyone who hands you a precise number with confidence is describing their marketing, not the literature.
What you can control is whether you know your own number and hold it. Here is how to run it.
Start at half. Colostrum carries dairy proteins and trace lactose. A short adjustment period in week one is common when anyone starts a new dairy protein, so a half scoop for the first week, taken with food, is the difference between a smooth start and an uncomfortable one. Build to full in week two.
Then hold one scoop every morning. Water, coffee, or a shake — it mixes clean. The variable that matters most in a protocol you can actually keep is consistency, not peak dose. A single scoop taken for ninety days is worth more than a perfect two-scoop protocol you abandon on day nine.
Anchor it to something you already do. 06:00, with the coffee. The men who stay on a supplement are the ones who stopped deciding about it.
Judge it on thirty days, not on a morning. There is no jolt here and there is nothing to chase in the first hour. Whatever a colostrum jar is doing, it is cumulative and quiet — which is exactly the profile that makes a return window worth reading before the first purchase rather than on day thirty.
Some men run two scoops through a heavy block. That doubles the dose and halves the number of days the tub lasts. It is a defensible choice during peak weeks and it is entirely yours to make.
Who tests it — and what a certificate still doesn't tell you
A colostrum certificate of analysis, at its best, prints an identity assay against a specification, numeric heavy-metal results against their limits, and a microbiological panel. Every figure with its specification beside it, so a reader can see the margin rather than take the word "clean" on trust. That is a real document and it is more than most of this category will hand over.
Now the part a colostrum brand is supposed to leave out. None of that assays IgG. It confirms what the powder is; it does not measure how much immunoglobulin is in it. The percentage a brand buys to is a product specification — a real number, the number ordered against and paid for — and a document of this kind does not verify it. We asked for an assay that would. We did not get one, so on 31 July 2026 the figure came off our label rather than stay on it unsupported. We did not put the identity match score in its place either: a match score is a spectral figure, and next to a milligram number it reads as a purity result.
The facility is a separate question with a separate answer, and the short version is the honest one. A facility certification is an assessment of a building's quality system on a date. It is not a test of a jar, it belongs to the manufacturer rather than to the brand quoting it, and a brand that cannot produce the letter should not be describing the badge. TARE holds no third-party certification of any kind, and the section that says so is the longest one on that page.
The older limit stands too. A certificate names the lot it was run on, and naming a lot is exactly what separates a certificate from a brochure. But it is not your lot. A brand that never touches a production line cannot connect the two, and would rather tell you the limit of its own document than let you assume something larger.
Since this article is about checking numbers, go and ask the last colostrum jar you bought for a document with a number and a specification on it. See what comes back. That is the point of publishing a document rather than describing one.
Reading any colostrum label in ninety seconds
Take the jar you are considering and run this in order.
- Is there an IgG percentage on the panel? If there is, it tells you what the powder was specified to contain. If there isn't, you cannot compare that jar to any other on immunoglobulin content — and neither can the brand selling it.
- Is the wording "standardised to" or "typically contains"? "Standardized to" is a specification. "Typically contains" is an average somebody hopes holds.
- Multiply. Milligrams × IgG percentage. Write down the answer. That is what the jar is specified to deliver — not what a test found in it, which is the next question.
- Check the serving size. Some jars quote their headline milligrams across two or three scoops. Divide the container price by actual daily servings, not by the number on the front.
- Ask for the document — then check what kind of document it is. "Lab tested," with nothing you can open, is a phrase. When you do get a certificate of analysis, ask two things of it. First: does it report measured results, or only the specification limits the formula is built to? A specification is what the formula is supposed to contain. A result is what the run actually contained. Both are worth having, they are not the same thing, and a brand publishing one while implying the other is counting on you not to look. Second: does it assay the ingredient you are buying the jar for, or does it confirm identity and screen for contaminants and stop there? Every colostrum certificate we were ever shown, from two manufacturers, did the second and not the first. Now you know which question to put to everyone else.
- Read the allergen line. Colostrum is a dairy product. It contains milk. If a label is coy about that, be less interested in everything else it says.
That last one matters more than people expect.
Who should skip it
Colostrum contains milk. If you have a milk allergy, this is not for you, and no dose discussion changes that. We put the allergen at the top of our FAQ rather than in the fine print, because a brand you cannot trust on allergens cannot be trusted on anything.
Colostrum is naturally lower in lactose than ordinary milk, but it is not lactose-free. If you are significantly lactose intolerant, expect what you would expect from other dairy, and start at a half scoop if you try it at all.
If you compete under a testing body: bovine colostrum naturally contains growth factors, including insulin-like growth factor, and anti-doping guidance in this area is specific to your sport and it changes. Check your own federation's current position rather than taking a supplement brand's word for it.
The bottom line
Two numbers, one multiplication — and behind them a document you can open rather than a phrase you have to take on faith. Run the multiplication on every jar you consider. What it gives you is a specification. What tells you whether the specification held is the certificate, and that is the harder document to get.
We ran that exercise on our own jar in public for a year, and it is the reason there is no jar. Every measured figure we held was an identity figure or a contaminant figure. The potency row was never on the document, from either manufacturer. The percentage came off the label on 31 July 2026 and the product came off the range in August. The account is kept on Testing & Certification rather than deleted with the product, because a brand that quietly loses the entries it did badly on is not evidence of anything.
Do the multiplication on whatever jar you are holding. Then ask for the document, and read which column it prints.
Also in the Journal: how to read a magnesium label — the same exercise on a different panel. And what creatine monohydrate actually does, the training-slot half of the Protocol.