Posted by Azar Aghayev
on July 23, 2026
Look at the black seed oil market today and you will see brands screaming about insanely high Thymoquinone (TQ) numbers—5.xx%, sometimes higher.
Why? Because a higher TQ claim lets brands charge double the price.
When a market rewards high numbers, companies stop focusing on better pressing techniques and start focusing on how to manipulate the test. If you look at how these massive TQ figures actually get onto product pages, it usually comes down to, but is not limited to, these tactics:
Invented Lab Reports
A black-and-white PDF page might look impressive to an untrained eye. But if you look closer, you can see that some things don't make sense mathematically (I've seen one where there was more TQ than black seed oil in a capsule), typos, a lab that doesn't exist, etc.
Pay-for-Play Labs
Some labs are simple: you pay for the test, and they hand back the exact number you need to sell your product. Some play it safe and try to stay within industry-plausible numbers.
Spiking the Oil with TQ Isolate
When oil has naturally low TQ, brands simply dissolve pure TQ isolate into a small oil sample before sending it to the lab. Because it is fat-soluble, it dissolves completely. Even under HPLC testing, the reported reading will come back high because only total TQ is measured.
TQ isolate is exceptionally expensive (often hundreds of dollars per gram). Adding it to every production bottle would be a speedrun to bankruptcy. Instead, they spike a single test tube to buy a shiny lab report, and then ship cheap, un-spiked oil to actual customers.
Reusing a Five-Year-Old Test
A farm yielded a single, unusually strong harvest years ago. The brand tested that batch, got a high reading, and posted the report online. Five years later, they keep using that same old document for every bottle they ship today. At best, they still have the same supplier.
Using Obscure Language
My personal Amazon favorite: "Our oil has up to 5.xx%" is the claim. You're first attracted to the number without thinking twice about it, blindly add it to your cart, and check out. However, "up to 5%" can technically be 1%, 2%, 0.5%, or 0.05%—in other words, anything below 5% (Which was never real anyways)
Final Thought
Buying a bottle of oil shouldn't require a background in pharmaceutical auditing.
To the brands cutting corners: stop washing your reputation down the drain for a quick dollar or euro. Press good seeds, sell or resell good oil, and be transparent about your process. Quality and integrity will always outlast marketing gimmicks.
Nature isn't a factory assembly line or a lab. Temperature, rainfall, and sunlight vary every season, so seeds from the exact same farm will never produce the exact same numbers year after year. Pushing for artificial consistency misses the point—carefully pressed seeds will always yield the highest quality oil possible from that harvest.
