Spring Valley is Walmart’s supplement brand, and they sell one of the most affordable probiotics on the market. This probiotic also contains digestive enzymes, and the company suggests that it can support digestive health.
But does Spring Valley Multi-Enzyme Probiotic contain research-backed ingredients for digestive health? Does it contain any unhealthy ingredients? Is it possible to naturally improve digestive health? And is Spring Valley Probiotic better or worse than other popular probiotics like Olly Probiotic?
In this article we’ll answer all of these questions and more, as we analyze the ingredients in Spring Valley’s probiotic to give our take on whether or not it’s likely to be effective for digestive support, and whether or not it's healthy.
We'll also feature a video on healing the gut naturally, and compare Spring Valley probiotic to other popular probiotic supplements to pick our winners.
Key takeaways:
- Some active ingredients we deem questionable
- Low probiotic dose
- We do not currently recommend Spring Valley Probiotic
Ingredient Analysis
Spring Valley Multi-Enzyme probiotic contains a large number of active ingredients, so we’ll break our ingredient analysis into two sections.
The first section of ingredients is shown below:
Betaine hydrochloride is a strange ingredient choice for a general health maintenance supplement in our opinion. It’s typically used in patients with low stomach acid, but we haven’t come across any clinical evidence that it provides health benefits in otherwise healthy individuals.
A 2021 meta-study found that betaine supplementation increases total cholesterol levels.
Pancreatin and amylase are examples of digestive enzymes, and while digestive enzymes are clinically shown to help improve gut health in individuals with gastrointestinal diseases, we haven’t come across any clinical evidence that they’re necessary or useful in individuals without gastrointestinal issues (nor does Spring Valley cite any on its product page).
Calcium is included, and as we documented in our Orgain Protein Powder review article, supplemental calcium has been shown in some medical studies to be associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The second section of ingredients in this supplement are shown below:
Lactobacillus acidophilus La-14 is the only probiotic ingredient out of the 11 total active ingredients, which is somewhat strange for a probiotic supplement.
This probiotic species was shown to be a critical factor in many important biological processes like regulation of cholesterol levels, in a medical review published in the Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology.
The dose of this probiotic at only 500 million colony-forming units (CFU) is relatively low. A Fact Sheet on probiotics published by the National Institutes of Health suggests that most probiotic supplements provide between 1 billion CFU and 10 billion CFU per dose.
Overall, we consider Spring Valley Multi-Enzyme Probiotic potentially likely to support gut health given its probiotic ingredient, however we consider this to be one of the worst probiotic formulations we’ve reviewed to date.
We can only find research backing for 1 of 11 active ingredients.
How a Nutritionist Fixed His Digestion
A clinical nutritionist and YouTube creator named Simnett Nutrition has a video discussing how he healed his digestion naturally that has over 1 million views.
We do not necessarily agree with all of his approaches, but figured this may be an engaging and informative video for consumers considering Spring Valley's probiotic:
Spring Valley vs. Popular Probiotics
Here's how Spring Valley probiotic compares to other popular probiotic supplements in terms of potential effectiveness and healthiness, in our opinion:
Olly Probiotic
While this supplement contains one research-backed active probiotic strain, it also contains three inactive ingredients we consider to be unhealthy, as we documented in our Olly Probiotic reviews article.
Gummy supplements (like Olly) are generally less healthy than capsule supplements.
Winner: Spring Valley Probiotic
Seed
Contains a probiotic strain which is clinically shown to support gastric barrier function, and is free from any inactive ingredients we consider unhealthy.
Winner: Seed
Align Probiotic
Contains many inactive ingredients we consider to be unhealthy, including a colorant which is banned in the EU due to genotoxicity concerns.
Winner: Spring Valley Probiotic
Our Clean Probiotic Picks
Ritual Synbiotic+ is our top probiotic pick.
It contains prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotics, and costs under $1.50 per serving at the time of updating this article.
Probiotics "can improve in the immune, gastrointestinal...health systems in healthy adults" according to a 2019 medical review.
MBG Organic Fiber Potency+ is our top prebiotic fiber pick.
MBG Organic Fiber Potency+ contains 100% soluble fiber, which was described as "one of the most important nutrients for the gut microbiota" in a clinical review published in the Molecules journal.
Both of the products recommended in this section are free of ingredients that we consider to be unhealthy.
Spring Valley Probiotic Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Affordable
- Contains a research-backed probiotic species
- No unhealthy additives
- Mostly positive online customer reviews
Cons:
- We can't find any proof that digestive enzymes help people without gastrointestinal disease
- Relatively low probiotic dose
- Contains supplemental calcium
