The Shake Standard
How we
score.
Every brand on Shake carries a Shake Score — an independent read on where a product stands. Here is exactly how we reach it. Nothing hidden, nothing for sale.
Five bands, and what each one means.
These are the bands, not a product. Every score published on Shake carries one of these five, and the reasoning that produced it sits beside the number on the page. Nothing here has been scored 100. A pillar can reach it; a product rarely does, and we would tell you why if one did.
Awareness over alarm.
We rate by evidence, amount, and exposure — never by scary-sounding names. Our job is to empower conscious choices, not to frighten. Three principles hold everything together.
The dose makes the poison
We weigh the evidence, the amount, how it enters the body, who’s using it, and how often — not just whether an ingredient sounds alarming.
Natural isn’t a synonym for safe
We reward genuine transparency and good formulation — not the word “natural.” Lead, arsenic and poison ivy are all natural, too.
Daily choices accumulate
The body doesn’t process a single meal — it processes the accumulation of daily choices. So products you use every day carry the most weight.
Nobody has to let us.
Standing in a shop holding a packet, you have questions. What is this actually made of. What does that certificate cover. Does “-free” mean anything, or is it just printed there.
And there is nobody to ask. The brand is not standing beside you. The label is small, and legally it only has to say so much.
Shake is that question, asked out loud, in public. We do not need a brand’s permission to ask it, and neither do you.
So we score what we write about — whether or not the brand has any arrangement with us, and whether or not they are pleased about it.
How that is kept straight
We only score from things anyone can look at: the label, the brand’s own website, published certificates, regulatory filings, and the scientific literature behind each concern. If it cannot be pointed at, it cannot be scored. No rumour, no competitor’s claim, no anonymous account.
And the number is not our opinion of a brand. It is calculated from what is published, by a written manual with a version number. We cannot move it by liking a company, and we cannot move it by disliking one.
The label writes the score. We don’t.
Only evidence moves it.
What a commercial relationship does change
Some brands pay to be in the Aligned Hub, and some pay us commission when you buy through a link. That buys presentation. It has never bought a number, and it cannot.
Free for every brand — arrangement or not
- A Shake Score
- The full reasoning behind it
- Every open question we still have
- Their name on the page
What a paid tier adds
- Their imagery and logo
- Their own words and story
- A link you can buy through
- Being featured
Cards are ordered by score, highest first, whatever the arrangement. An unpaid brand that outscores a paying one sits above it. That will happen, and when it does the page is working properly.
Featured means this is the one we looked at most closely — not that it scored highest. The scores are on the page; they rank themselves.
Every product, four ways.
A thing is never simply “good” or “bad.” We score each product against four pillars, then average them into one Shake Score.
People
Effects on human health over a lifetime of daily use — ingredient safety, material integrity, and honest disclosure.
Animals
Cruelty-free sourcing, and harm — or care — toward wildlife and waterways. Animal cruelty is a non-starter.
Gaia
The planetary footprint, from ingredient to bin — recyclability, seed integrity, food sovereignty, and harmony with the Earth’s natural rhythm.
Frequency
How minimal, natural, whole and intentional a product is — including its energetic footprint, like whether it emits electromagnetic fields.
What to avoid. What to seek.
Keeping these two separate is what keeps our scoring honest. A product sits somewhere on both at once.
What to avoid
Evidence-tiered ingredients and exposures of concern — from banned substances to contested, emerging risks. These subtract from a score, weighted by how strong the evidence is and how you’re exposed.
What to seek
The virtues: whole-food integrity, non-GMO and heirloom sourcing, full disclosure, trusted certifications, and cruelty-free care. These add to a score — but can never paper over a serious concern.
Some things set a limit, not a penalty.
Most of what we find either takes points away or gives them back. Some things do neither. They set a — a limit on how high a score can climb, no matter how much a product does well elsewhere.
Taking points away is a statement about harm. We only ever do it when we can name the substance, name the tier of evidence, and point to the study. A ceiling says something much narrower: that we are not going to assume the best on a question nobody has answered.
There are three of them.
When something on our avoid list is genuinely in the product
If a product contains an ingredient with the strongest tier of evidence against it, no amount of good elsewhere lifts it past Worth a Pause. A brilliant score in three areas does not buy its way past a concern.
The one exception, and we would rather explain it than hide it: where the harm falls during manufacture and the substance is not in the finished product at all, we take the full penalty and skip the ceiling. Someone was harmed making it. Nothing is in it. Both of those are true and the score should say both.
When we cannot tell what a fabric is made from
For anything worn or slept in, we look at how far the fibre travelled from the plant or animal it came from. Linen and wool sit at one end. Polyester and elastane sit at the other. Where a brand does not publish what its fabric is made of, we place it at the bottom of that scale until it does.
Not as a punishment. Simply because we cannot check, and we would rather say so than guess generously.
When we have asked a question and had no answer
Every category has a small number of questions that genuinely determine what a product is. For anything worn against the body, they are: what is each layer made of, what does your certificate actually cover, how does the odour control work, and has the “PFAS-free” claim ever been tested.
When we ask a brand one of those questions in writing, give them a deadline, and hear nothing back — or get a reply with nothing in it we can check — we put a ceiling on the People pillar.
We do not take points away, because that would mean claiming a harm we have not found. We simply stop assuming in the brand’s favour.
And when we do it, we say so on the page: what we asked, when we asked it, and that no answer came. Not as an accusation — as a fact you are entitled to have.
The ceiling lifts the moment the brand answers with evidence — a certificate number we can look up ourselves, or test results from an independent laboratory. Not a reassurance, and not an explanation of why the question is unfair. Something a stranger could check.
We call this the Disclosure Default. On a category page you will see it headed — the same thing, said to you rather than to us.
We would rather tell you what we don’t know
than pretend we do.
Sending us evidence is free. It always has been.
Any brand can send us a certificate number, a test result, a composition by layer, or a corrected ingredient list — at any time, whether we have ever spoken to them or not. We check it, and the score changes if the evidence says it should.
There is no fee for this. No membership, no tier, no queue you can pay to skip. It has never been possible to pay Shake to look at evidence, and it never will be.
We are strict about this for one reason. If reviewing evidence ever cost money, then money would move scores. The free route has to be the fastest route to a better number, or none of the rest of this page means anything.
And before we publish a score on a brand we have not spoken to, we write to them first — with the score, the reasoning, the questions we still have, and a fixed date. That date is fourteen days out and it does not move, for anyone. Silence cannot delay a publication, and evidence is welcome after it just as much as before.
How strongly it counts.
Not every concern is equal. We grade the strength of the evidence — and we never flag anything without a cited source.
Strong & established
Well-documented harm — often already banned or restricted in the EU. Heaviest weight, and requires two independent authoritative sources to assign.
Contested or emerging
Where good scientists genuinely disagree, or the risk falls on a sensitive group. Flagged with nuance, never as alarm — fluoride and EMF live here.
Context & dose-dependent
Fine in the right amount, form or context. A gentle note only, for the cautious.
What the number means.
Each pillar starts at 100. Concerns subtract, verified virtues add back, and the four average into one score.
Our promise
“A paid listing never buys a better score. Commercial relationships never influence editorial position — ever.”
We score every product independently. A lower score isn’t bad publicity — it’s an open view with the working shown, and it’s exactly why our readers trust us. Brands may respond to a score with evidence, and we’ll review and re-score where it’s warranted. Every score is recorded, with the reasoning behind it, so anyone can see how we got there.
The lines we hold.
- We never call ingredients “toxic,” “chemical-free” or “detox” — undefined, fear-based terms have no place here.
- We never let a certification or badge cancel out a serious, well-evidenced concern.
- We never assign a concern without a cited, authoritative source.
- We never let a commercial relationship move a score. The number is the number.
- We never present contested science as settled — emerging findings are always framed as emerging.
- We never let a brand see its score before you do — there is no preview, and no negotiating step.
- We never change a score because we are asked to. We change it when evidence arrives — a certificate, a test result, a corrected ingredient list. Being told we are unfair is not evidence.
- We never quietly raise a score and leave a bad one unpublished. Scores go down as well as up, and when one falls we say why. A score that has only ever moved upwards is not a score.
The terms we use.
- Ceiling
- A limit on how high a score can go, whatever else a product does well. A ceiling is not a penalty — it does not take points away. It says only that we will not assume the best about something we could not check.
- Disclosure Default
- What we do when we have asked a brand a question in writing, given them a deadline, and had no answer. We put a ceiling on the score and say on the page what we asked. It lifts as soon as they answer with something checkable — a certificate number, or third-party test results. A reassurance is not an answer.
- Tier 1
- Our strongest level of evidence — harm that is well established, usually already banned or restricted in the EU. We require two independent authoritative sources before anything is placed here.
- SOP
- Standard Operating Manual — Shake’s written scoring rulebook. It sets out how a product is assessed, what counts as evidence, and what each score means. It is versioned, and every score records which version produced it, so you can check what that version actually required.
- On Our Radar
- A brand we have noticed but have not assessed yet. It carries no score because we have not got to it — nothing to do with the brand, and nothing they need to do about it.
- PFAS
- A large family of synthetic chemicals used to repel water, oil and stains. They break down extremely slowly, which is why they are often called forever chemicals. Their usefulness and their persistence are the same property.
- Open Questions
- Things we have asked a brand and not yet had a checkable answer to. We publish them rather than waiting for a tidy page.
Transparent by design.
Explore the brands and products we’ve scored — or, if you’re a brand, apply to be scored and featured.