When a brand says "lab tested," the report itself is the only part worth trusting not the sentence summarising it. Here's how to actually read one, using the kind of report a food testing lab produces, field by field.
Start with the accreditation, not the result
Before looking at any number, check who did the testing. NABL the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories is the body that accredits labs in India against the international standard ISO/IEC 17025. Accreditation means the lab's methods, equipment, and competence have been independently audited; it isn't a claim the lab makes about itself.
Every accredited lab has a certificate number (formatted like TC-XXXXX), and an issue date and valid until date. Two things are worth checking:
- Was the certificate valid on the date the report was issued? A lab whose accreditation lapsed before the test doesn't carry the same weight.
- Does the lab's accredited scope actually cover what it tested? NABL certificates list the specific fields a lab is accredited for you can look this up independently at nabl-india.org rather than taking a brand's word for it.
The report header
Most test reports carry the same block of identifying information near the top:
- Report number a unique reference for that specific report. Worth noting down if you ever need to query it with the lab.
- Name and address of customer who submitted the sample. This isn't always the brand itself; sometimes it's a distributor or retailer, which is worth noticing either way.
- Sample description and code what was tested, including any batch number marked on the sample.
- Date of receipt, date analysis started, date analysis completed
the actual timeline of testing, separate from when the report was written up.
If a report is missing dates, a report number, or a clear description of what was sampled, treat it with more scepticism, not less.
The results table
This is usually laid out as: parameter tested, unit (commonly mg/kg), result obtained, test method used, and specification (the limit or requirement it's being checked against).
A few things matter here that are easy to skim past:
- "Not Detected" is not the same as "zero." It means the substance wasn't found above the method's detection threshold the smallest amount that method can reliably pick up. It's an honest limitation of analytical chemistry, not a loophole.
- The specification tells you what "pass" actually means. For some
parameters it's a numeric ceiling (say, under 100 mg/kg). For others
synthetic colours in tea, for instance it may simply read "should be absent," meaning any detectable amount is a fail. - The test method matters. HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) is a standard, reliable method for detecting synthetic dyes at low concentrations. If a report doesn't state its method, you can't independently judge how sensitive the test actually was.
What the report doesn't tell you
Two limits are easy to miss:
- A report only covers what was tested. A clean result on seven synthetic colours says nothing about an eighth colour that wasn't part of the panel, or about pesticide residue, heavy metals, or microbiological quality if those weren't tested.
- A report only covers the sample tested. One batch's report doesn't extend to a different batch, even of the same product.
Any lab note at the bottom of the report about the result applying "only to the tested sample and applicable parameters" is worth reading as carefully as the results table itself it's the lab drawing the boundary of its own claim.
How we apply this to our own reports
Every report we publish keeps its report number, its dates, and its full results table intact, and we link the original PDF rather than just quoting a summary. You can check our lab's accreditation status independently before trusting a word we say about our own results.