The four food triggers: dairy, beans, protein, fat
Post-meal heaviness is almost always one of four things. Identify the trigger, pick the right enzyme, stop white-knuckling through dinner.
Most people who react to food know they react to “something.” Pinning down which trigger is actually causing discomfort is the first step in eating normally again. Here are the four categories — in roughly descending frequency — and the enzymes that address each one.
01 · Dairy & lactose
Cheese, yogurt, cream, ice cream, milk. Most adults globally lose the lactase enzyme after childhood — the evolutionary norm, not the exception. A single slice of cheese pizza can contain 6–8 g of lactose, more than most under-dosed lactase supplements can handle.
Enzyme needed: Lactase (specifically fungal β-galactosidase) at 300–600 LACU per serving. For severe reactors, L. acidophilus supplementation produces additional lactase in the gut.
02 · Beans, lentils & fibrous vegetables
Black beans, lentils, chickpeas, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower. The gas-causing oligosaccharides — raffinose, stachyose, verbascose — resist human digestion entirely. They ferment in the colon unless an enzyme breaks them down first.
Enzyme needed: α-Galactosidase (the active in Beano) at roughly 300 GALU per serving. This is one of the cleanest cause-and-effect relationships in the digestive enzyme world.
03 · Protein-heavy meals
Steak, chicken, eggs, protein shakes. For most people this is about speed of digestion rather than a categorical intolerance — the gut is capable of breaking protein down, just not always fast enough to keep up with a 32-oz ribeye.
Enzyme needed: Protease (fungal) at 2000–3000 HUT per serving, ideally paired with bromelain (pineapple) and papain (papaya) to cover the full pH range from stomach (2) through duodenum (8).
04 · Fat & fried food
Fried food, cream sauces, oily nuts, butter, dense cheese. When bile can’t process the fat load fast enough, the meal lingers and feels “heavy” for hours after eating.
Enzyme needed: Lipase (fungal) at 1500 FIP per serving. Lipase is the single most under-dosed enzyme in the multi-enzyme category — it’s expensive and hard to source at scale, so most competitors cut corners here first.
Why single-enzyme products disappoint
A slice of pizza is not one trigger — it is all four. It has lactose (needs lactase), casein (protein, needs protease), cheese fat (needs lipase), and if there are beans on top, raffinose (needs α-galactosidase). Taking just Lactaid before pizza handles ~20% of the digestive burden.
This is why we built Markzyme-Pro as a multi-enzyme + probiotic — not because more ingredients is better marketing, but because real meals are composite triggers. Read more about the formula →
Part of the Dispatch — field notes from Nutriva Labs.