Editorial Methodology
The People & Process Behind Every Article We Publish
Every article on Nutra Botanics is researched, fact-checked, and reviewed by our in-house editorial team against a published standards policy. This page explains who writes the work, how we source claims, how we handle the cases where the research disagrees, and how we correct ourselves when we get something wrong.
Who We Are
Named authors, rigorous standards, traceable accountability
Every article on Nutra Botanics carries the name of the person who authored it. We publish under named bylines because accountability matters: a reader should know who wrote the work in front of them and what that person’s background is. Articles are researched, fact-checked, and reviewed against our published standards policy before they go live.
Our authorship model is built around two roles. The author is responsible for research, structure, and accuracy of industry, formulation, and product-context information — the working knowledge that comes from operating inside the supplement industry. The medical reviewer role is reserved for a credentialed clinician (RD, MD, ND, PharmD, or equivalent) who independently verifies clinical and physiological claims. We are currently recruiting for the medical reviewer role; until that position is filled, our author handles industry- and formulation-level accuracy and our internal fact-check process (described below) substitutes for clinical-reviewer sign-off.
We are explicit about what each role is qualified to say. Industry-expertise authors speak to formulation choices, ingredient sourcing, manufacturing standards, and what the published research shows; they do not provide medical advice. Where a topic touches clinical care that requires personalized diagnosis or prescription, our articles say so explicitly and refer you to a qualified healthcare provider. Nothing on this site is medical advice.
Contributors
Founder, Nutra Botanics · 20 years in supplement-industry brand operations, product development, and ingredient sourcing.
The Three Rules
Standards we hold every article to, without exception
These rules exist because we sell supplements and we are aware of the incentive that creates. They are our structural defense against that incentive.
Research First, Product Second
Every claim about a mechanism, benefit, dose, or side effect must be supported by peer-reviewed research, a regulatory position paper, or established nutrition-science consensus. Marketing copy is never a source — not ours, not a competitor’s, not an ingredient supplier’s.
No Medical Claims
We do not claim that any supplement cures, treats, or prevents disease. Per FDA rules, supplements are not drugs. Our articles describe what research has studied, not clinical outcomes we promise to deliver. Hedged disease language gets caught at fact-check.
Transparent Limitations
When the research is thin, contested, or limited to a specific population, we say so in the article. “We don’t know” is a legitimate answer we will print rather than paper over with hedged marketing language.
Sourcing Hierarchy
Four tiers of evidence, weighted in that order
When sources disagree, higher tiers win. A claim supported only by Tier 4 evidence is framed as such in the text — we do not promote it to Tier 1 footing by editing the tone.
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Tier 01 — Strongest
Systematic reviews & meta-analyses
Cochrane reviews, meta-analyses indexed in PubMed, and systematic reviews published in peer-reviewed journals. Used whenever available, and always cited in preference to a single underlying RCT.
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Tier 02
Randomized controlled trials
Individual RCTs indexed in PubMed or published in journals with transparent peer review. Used when no Tier 1 review exists, or when a recent RCT post-dates the most recent review on a fast-moving topic.
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Tier 03
Position statements & regulatory guidance
Consensus statements from bodies like ISSN, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, EFSA, FDA, and NIH ODS. Used for dosing guidelines, safety boundaries, and population-specific considerations where the literature is settled.
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Tier 04 — Preliminary
Observational, mechanistic & preclinical research
Cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, and in-vitro or animal research. Clearly labeled in-text as preliminary or mechanism-level evidence — never presented as equivalent to human clinical outcomes.
The Process
Five stages every article moves through before it publishes
Drafting through publication QA, with a fifth ongoing-review stage that runs as long as the article is live on the site.
Drafting
A writer on our team researches the topic against the four-tier sourcing hierarchy, outlines the claim structure, and drafts the article. The writer is responsible for matching every factual statement to a specific source before handing off — no source, no claim.
Stage 1Fact-check
A second team member reviews every claim against its cited source. Claims that cannot be substantiated are removed, re-sourced, or rewritten as clearly-qualified statements. This is where marketing drift gets caught — sentences that read plausibly but describe more than the underlying study actually showed.
Stage 2Subject-matter review
A team member familiar with the research literature on the article’s topic reads the piece end-to-end. Their job is to flag anything that reads plausibly but is actually wrong — the kind of error that survives a literal fact-check because each individual sentence is technically accurate.
Stage 3Publication QA
A final editor reviews structure, readability, schema markup, FAQ accuracy, and FDA-compliant safety-net language. Only after this step does the article publish.
Stage 4Ongoing re-review
We review published content as new research emerges, when readers flag corrections, and when our editorial team identifies an article that warrants an update. Articles covering fast-moving topics get more frequent attention. Each article carries a “Last reviewed” line so you can see exactly when the piece was last checked.
OngoingWhen Research Disagrees
How we handle contested claims
Most supplement topics have at least one corner where the literature splits. These three rules govern what we do when it does.
Tier wins, then recency
When a meta-analysis disagrees with a single newer RCT, we report the meta-analysis as the headline finding and note the newer trial as a contrasting data point. We don’t cherry-pick the result that flatters the ingredient.
Disclose funding conflicts
When a study is funded by an ingredient supplier or supplement brand — including, in principle, our own — the funding source is disclosed in-text. Industry-funded research isn’t excluded; it’s flagged so readers can weigh it themselves.
If we can’t reconcile, we say so
When the evidence genuinely splits and there is no defensible synthesis, the article says “the evidence is mixed” and presents both sides honestly. We do not invent a tie-breaker, and we do not bury one side in a footnote.
Citation Standards
What a citation on this site is required to do
Five rules govern every footnote, parenthetical, and reference link we publish.
(Author et al., Year) linking to pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/[PMID]/.
Corrections & Updates
When we get something wrong, we fix it — and we say we did
Reader-submitted corrections go directly to the editorial team via our contact page. Valid corrections are addressed promptly — timing varies depending on the complexity of the re-review required, but you will hear back from a human on our team, not an autoresponder.
- Factual errors (wrong dose, wrong study cite, wrong mechanism) are corrected and the article’s “Last reviewed” date is updated.
- Substantive changes (a reversal of a claim, a new meta-analysis that shifts the recommendation) trigger a dated “Editor’s note” in the article body describing what changed and when.
- Typos and formatting issues are fixed silently without a note, since the substance is unchanged.
- Reader-credit policy. When a reader correction is substantive, the editor’s note thanks the reader by first name (or anonymously, on request). Catching errors is a public good and we treat it as one.
We do not remove articles silently. If an article is deprecated or merged into a larger guide, the old URL redirects to the replacement and we preserve the historical content for anyone tracing a citation from an older source.
Commercial Disclosures
We sell supplements. Here’s how that doesn’t shape the work.
Nutra Botanics is a supplement brand. We sell products. That creates an obvious conflict of interest with any article we publish about the category our products occupy. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and we want you to know how we handle it.
We sell the ingredients we write about. When an article covers creatine, collagen, BCAAs, CLA, or any other ingredient we sell, we link to our product pages. We label those links clearly as ours. Research claims in the article are not allowed to reference our product — only the ingredient.
We do not pay for editorial coverage. Our editorial team does not take payment, free product, or sponsorship from outside supplement brands, retailers, or ingredient suppliers in exchange for editorial coverage. Articles that mention competitors are written on the same research-first footing as articles that mention our own products.
We do not publish sponsored articles. Every article on this site is editorial content written by our team against the standards described above. If we ever publish paid content, it will be clearly labeled as such and excluded from the standards on this page.
We disclose internal funding the same way we disclose external funding. If a study cited in our articles was sponsored by Nutra Botanics or Nutrition World, the citation says so — the same way we’d flag a competitor’s sponsored study.
The Honest Boundary
What we don’t claim
Two lists. The first is what no Nutra Botanics article will ever say. The second is what we will say, every time the topic warrants it.
Never on this site
- Cures, treats, or prevents disease. Supplements are not drugs and we will not write about them as if they were.
- Replaces a diagnosis or a prescription. If your situation needs a clinician, the article says so and stops there.
- Guaranteed outcomes. No “you will lose X pounds,” no “you will gain Y muscle,” no “your hormones will return to baseline.”
- Hype words. No “miracle,” no “breakthrough,” no “revolutionary.” Honest language only.
- Studies we haven’t read. If we cite it, a team member has read it. We do not paraphrase abstracts secondhand from other publishers.
Always in the work
- Measured language. “Supports,” “may help,” “is associated with,” “research suggests.”
- The FDA disclaimer on every page. The supplement-not-drug line lives in the footer of every article on this site, no exceptions.
- Population caveats. If a finding came from young athletic men, the article says so before generalizing to anyone else.
- A “talk to your doctor” line where it belongs. Pregnancy, prescriptions, chronic conditions, dosing for kids — all kick out to a healthcare provider.
- A real publish + last-reviewed date. Both stamps are accurate, and the reviewed date moves only when the article actually gets reviewed.
Spot Something Wrong?
If we got something wrong, we want to hear about it
Every correction submission is read by a human on our editorial team, and substantive corrections are credited in the article’s editor’s note. The fastest path to a better article is a sharp-eyed reader.