What's in the bottle

Are melatonin gummies accurate?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20265 sources

Mostly not. In a 2023 lab test of 25 US melatonin gummy products, 22 didn’t match their label. One had no melatonin at all, and the rest held anywhere from 74 to 347 percent of what the label said. Most held 1.2 to 1.7 times the label, so a 5 mg gummy is more often 6 to 8.5 mg.

The label says 5 mg, so you assume you’re taking 5 mg. With a prescription drug that’s a fair assumption. With a US supplement, nobody checks the jar before it goes on sale.

We’d treat a gummy’s dose as a range, start with the smallest strength you can find, or switch to plain tablets from a brand that has each batch tested by an outside lab. If you share a jar with anyone, keep it where children can’t see it or reach it.

It’s like a bakery cookie labeled “small”. You’ll get roughly that, but nobody weighed yours.

The test

In 2023, Pieter Cohen of Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts and a team at the University of Mississippi measured what was inside 25 melatonin gummy products sold in the US. 22 of the 25 were off their label. One had no melatonin they could detect. The others ranged from 74 percent to 347 percent of the labeled amount, and most held more than the label, between 1.2 and 1.7 times.

It isn’t only gummies

A 2017 Canadian study tested 31 melatonin supplements of all kinds. The melatonin ran from 83 percent below the label to 478 percent above it, and in one product it varied by as much as 465 percent from one batch to the next. More than 71 percent missed their label by over 10 percent, and 8 of them contained serotonin, a related brain chemical, at 1 to 75 micrograms.

Why nobody caught it

In the US melatonin is a dietary supplement. By law the FDA doesn’t approve dietary supplements or their labels before they’re sold, and the company that makes them is responsible for what’s inside. Is melatonin FDA approved? has the rest.

The children’s part

Gummies are made to taste like candy, and children treat them that way. In US emergency visits for young children who got into melatonin from 2019 to 2022, gummies were the form most often recorded, and more than a third of the children had gotten into 10 or more gummies or tablets. Keep every jar up high and out of sight. If a child swallowed some, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222.

Turn on the gummy switch in the tool below to see your dose as a band instead of a line. Don’t drive after a dose.