Canada vs US Dose Check · method and verification
The method was frozen on 12 November 2026. The file's SHA-256 hash begins 04d5b86cd884, and the original, before the amendment, began 24244ae32b22. The tool refuses to build if the method file no longer matches its hash.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Licences sampled | 400 |
| Seed | 99 |
| Mismatches | 0 |
A separate Python reader recomputes the amount per unit, the maximum doses per day, the daily amount and the share of the limit straight from the raw LNHPD tables.
The checking led to one amendment to the method, dated and recorded:
2026-11-12 (amendment 1, written after the data were read for value sets and before any share was quoted or published): the value sets the protocol left open are fixed as follows. (a) The limit is the NIH adult male row whose age band contains 19 years (for magnesium the 19 to 30 band, 350 mg, supplemental magnesium only). (b) A dose row is adult when its population text contains "adult", or is "Women" or "Men". (c) A frequency counts as daily only when its unit is "daily" or "per day"; the unit "Day(s)" and "Day" are not counted because the data do not say whether it means per day or every so many days, and licences with only such rows are "cannot assess". (d) A dose unit is countable when it is a capsule, tablet, caplet, softgel, gelcap, lozenge, chewable or gummy; liquids, drops, scoops, packets, grams and servings are "cannot assess". (e) The amount used is the ingredient's maximum quantity where stated, otherwise its quantity; units milligram, microgram and gram are converted to the limit's unit. (f) Ingredient names are matched by exact LNHPD ingredient_name to the ten nutrients; compound-named ingredients (for example ascorbic acid, pyridoxine) are not counted, which understates coverage. (g) Where a licence lists two rows of one nutrient, their amounts are summed. (h) A share above ten times the limit is counted and shown on the licence page with a notice that it is more often a data-entry or unit issue, and is excluded from nutrient medians and percentiles. The original protocol hash is kept in PROTOCOL-CANADA-DOSE-VS-LIMIT-2026-11-12.original.sha256.
Elemental versus compound amounts: LNHPD potencies are normally stated as the nutrient, but a minority state the compound. Doses are the licence's recommendation, not what people take. Some licences list several dose rows for different ages or purposes; the adult maximum is used. The NIH limit applies to supplement intake summed across all supplements; one product is compared alone.
The source data is public: see the Health Canada licensed natural health products database. The dataset, the method and the code that rebuilds it are published at doi:10.5281/zenodo.24180566. Open the Canada vs US Dose Check to see the result.
The method was written, hashed and saved before any figure from the data was published. A change after that is an amendment with a date, and the original hash is kept, so anyone can see what was decided and when.
A tool can agree with itself and still be wrong. A separate reader, written without the builder's code, recomputes the figures from the raw files; where the two disagree, one of them has a defect.
No. It means the numbers match an independent recomputation under the stated method. The limits section lists what the method does not cover.
Further reading: Zenodo, where the datasets are deposited; the FAIR data principles; the National Academies on reproducibility; the author's ORCID record; the Health Canada licensed natural health products database.
Compiled by Vincent Wesley Couey (ORCID 0009-0005-6869-308X).