Shilajit is one of the few supplement ingredients where most buyers cannot say what the substance physically is. That is unusual, and it is the reason the shelf looks the way it does.
So: what it is, what an extract ratio on the label means, why the trace-mineral count on nearly every jar is uncheckable, and where the evidence actually sits — which for this ingredient is lower than for anything else we sell.
What is shilajit?
Shilajit is a mineral pitch — a dark, tar-like exudate that seeps out of rock in high mountain ranges, formed over a long period from compressed plant material. It is collected, purified and dried or extracted. On a supplement label it usually appears under the botanical-style name Asphaltum.
Two consequences follow from that description and they run through the rest of this article. First, it is a geological material, so its composition varies by where it was collected. Second, because it comes out of rock, heavy metals are the live quality question for this ingredient in a way they are not for a powder made out of milk.
What is actually in shilajit?
Chiefly fulvic and humic substances, a mineral fraction, and a group of compounds called dibenzo-alpha-pyrones. Fulvic acid is the component most brands lead with, because it is the one with a name a buyer can look up. What the proportions are in any given jar depends on the source material and the purification method.
That is the honest inventory. Now the part the category adds on top of it.
Is there really 84 trace minerals in shilajit?
Nearly every jar on the shelf says so, and almost none of them publish a document showing it. The figure has become category furniture: repeated because it is repeated. Shilajit does carry a mineral fraction, but a specific count is a testable claim, and a testable claim without a test is a phrase.
We do not print a trace-mineral count on Mineral Base and will not until there is a certificate under it. That is not a criticism of the number. It may well be defensible. It is a statement about what we can show, which is the only standard this brand runs on.
What does a 30:1 extract ratio mean?
It describes the concentration step: thirty parts of raw starting material reduced to one part of finished extract. It is a process description, not a potency measurement. Two 30:1 extracts from different raw material, made by different methods, can differ substantially and both ratios are accurate.
So a ratio is worth having on a label and is worth much less than it looks. It tells you the manufacturer concentrated the material and by roughly how much. It does not tell you what came out the other end, and only an assay on the finished extract does that.
Mineral Base prints shilajit extract 30:1 (Asphaltum) 400 mg per capsule, alongside ashwagandha root extract 30:1 at 100 mg, sea moss extract 20:1 at 100 mg, and tongkat ali root extract 300:1 at 100 mg. Four ingredients, four figures, each printed on its own line. Nothing sits inside a blend.
Why do fulvic acid percentages not compare across brands?
Because fulvic acid is not one molecule. It is a class of related compounds defined partly by how they behave in a particular assay, and the assays in common use do not agree with one another. Run two accepted methods on the same sample and both can return honest numbers that are meaningfully different.
Which means a 60% fulvic figure on one jar and a 75% figure on another may be describing the same material through two instruments. Comparing them as if they were comparable is the single most common error in this category, and brands are not in a hurry to correct it.
The rule that survives: a fulvic percentage is worth reading when the method is named beside it, and worth very little when it is not.
What should be on a shilajit label
Six things, in the order worth checking them.
- The form and the amount, on one line. Resin, powder or extract, with a milligram figure. If the figure is missing, stop here.
- The extract ratio, if it is an extract — and the knowledge that a ratio is a process, not a potency.
- No proprietary blend. If shilajit sits inside a combined weight with three other things, nothing can be calculated and the label has answered the question by refusing to.
- A named assay beside any fulvic percentage. Without a method, the percentage is not comparable to anything.
- A heavy-metal document. This is the one that matters most for a mineral pitch, and it is the one least often supplied.
- Whether the document reports measured results or specification limits. A specification is what a formula is supposed to be. A result is what a test found. Both are worth having and they are not the same thing.
That last distinction is the whole of reading a supplement label, generalised past this one ingredient.
What the research does not show
This is where we rank ourselves last. Shilajit is the thinnest evidence base of anything TARE sells. The human work is small in scale, uneven in quality, and several of the more frequently cited trials were funded by the companies supplying the ingredient. Nothing in it is replicated well enough for us to hang a claim on.
The dose question is unsettled and the shelf does not reflect it. The trials most often pointed to used doses that do not match what is in most capsules, including ours. That gap is rarely mentioned by anyone selling the ingredient, and it should be the first thing said rather than the last.
The sourcing and contamination question is real and it is not resolved by marketing. A material collected from rock can carry what the rock carried. This has been reported on in the general press. It is the reason the heavy-metal document matters more here than anywhere else in a supplement cabinet.
So the honest position is a narrow one. We sell Mineral Base on what is printed on it — four ingredients, four figures, nothing hidden in a blend — and not on what the literature might eventually support. A cleared statement, where one exists, does not promote a product in the evidence ranking, and this one is at the bottom of ours.
Where our own document is weakest
Mineral Base is one of two TARE formulas whose certificate reports specification limits and no measured results at all. Lot 6010323, dated 18 June 2026. It sets out composition per serving and the heavy-metal and microbiological limits the formula is built to. It names no method, no test date and no measured figure.
That is worth stating twice, because of what this ingredient is. Mineral Base is the formula where a measured lead figure would matter most, and it is one of the two where we do not have one. We have said we will pay for that testing ourselves if the manufacturer does not.
One more piece of arithmetic that nobody else in this position would print. The permitted-lead limits on the two specification-only certificates are identical at 6.0 mcg per serving, so anyone taking both Mineral Base and Training Water daily is carrying a stacked ceiling of 12.0 mcg of permitted lead a day, with no measured figure for either. That sum is ours, and it is on the site rather than left for a reader to assemble. Both certificates are transcribed row by row on Testing & Certification.
Against a shelf of ten-in-one stacks that print one combined weight, four figures printed individually is the entire differentiation of this product, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up. The evidence is thin, the document is a specification, and both facts are on the page.
More in this cluster: the magnesium form comparison, where the arithmetic is much friendlier, and the sixty-second label procedure.