For years I travelled with a pouch or a pill box for better digestion on the go.
Bitter herbs, in a tincture bottle that leaked twice. A digestive enzyme, one pill, a different brand every few months. Mint capsules. And a fourth thing that changed depending on what I’d last read, or what I’d decided had worked last time.
All of it in a little zip bag at the bottom of my handbag, taken in combinations I never wrote down and couldn’t have explained to anyone, least of all a doctor.
I know how that sounds. I’d have judged me too.
I remember the specific nights. Date night at the Italian place, splitting the tiramisu, and me doing quiet arithmetic before the plate arrived instead of listening to the person across the table. A trip where I unpacked the pouch before the clothes. Crisis if it’s left behind.
None of those were emergencies. That’s exactly what made them hard to say. Nobody was ill. They were just good evenings I was only half in.
At some point I stopped reading it as something wrong with me and started reading it as something missing from the shelf. Nobody had made the thing I was making by hand. So we set out to.
That took about a year, and most of it was slower and less glamorous than I’d imagined. We worked with a chemist and a supplement manufacturer in Europe to formulate something custom rather than pick a stock formula off a contract manufacturer’s list — which is, incidentally, what a great many supplement brands actually are: someone else’s blend with a nice label on it.
I got a lot wrong on the way. My first instinct was to put in all the things, which is exactly the mistake I’d been buying for years. It took someone who actually understood the chemistry to tell me that a longer list is usually a weaker product.
Why DIGEST looks the way it does
Every decision in this jar started as an argument with something I’d bought.
Six things, not sixteen. I used to pick up jars listing twenty ingredients and feel reassured by it. Then I learned how much powder actually fits in a capsule, and realised that a twenty-ingredient formula is mostly a list. You can have a long list or you can have real amounts. We picked six and gave them room.
1,250mg, in two capsules. The pouch existed in the first place because nothing I could buy had enough of anything in it. If we were replacing four products, one small capsule was never going to do it.
Two enzymes and four botanicals. Bromelain at 250mg, from the stem of the pineapple. Papain at 150mg, from papaya — it’s the thing that makes papaya work as a meat tenderiser. Then dandelion root at 300mg, which has been in European bitter tonics for centuries. Ginger at 200mg. Peppermint at 200mg. Lemon balm at 150mg, grown in monastery gardens since the middle ages.
Standardised, not just present. This is the one I’d want you to take away. “Ginger extract” on a label tells you nothing at all — it could be almost anything. Ours says standardised to 5% gingerols, and the peppermint says 2% menthol, because that’s the number that decides whether an ingredient is doing something or decorating a list.
And it had to be something I’d leave on the counter. Not shoved to the back of a cupboard behind the jars. That sounds like a vanity point and it isn’t — the thing you can see is the thing you use.
60 capsules. Thirty servings. Two capsules with food. Made in the EU.
Common isn’t the same as normal
The reason I care about this is smaller than a health argument, and more personal than a business one.
When I started asking people directly — friends, co-workers at lunch, women after a class, someone next to me at a dinner — almost nobody said no. Everyone had a version. Which dinner, which clothes, which trip, how long between eating and being seen. And almost none of them had ever said it out loud either, for exactly the reason I hadn’t: it isn’t serious enough to be a real problem and it’s too embarrassing to be small talk. So it sits in the gap, and people carry it there for years.
I found that genuinely upsetting, more than I expected to. The number of small decisions people are quietly making that removes joy out of the occasion.
Common isn’t the same as normal. Something can be extremely widespread and still not be a thing anyone should have to build their week around. That’s the reason to make this — not because the meals are the problem. Because they shouldn’t be taking up that much room in your head.
What I’m not going to claim
So: I’m not going to tell you this treats anything. There is no before-and-after photograph on our site and there never will be. I’m not going to tell you how fast anything happens, because a number like that is a drug claim and this isn’t a drug.
What I can tell you is exactly what is in it, in what quantity, and where it was made. That’s the entire pitch. If that isn’t enough, I’d genuinely rather you didn’t buy it.
And if it is enough — if you’ve read the numbers and you want to try it against a dinner you actually care about — here’s where it lives.
At launch, we offer 20% off with BAHAR20 and free shipping on all orders except US single pack.
Food supplement. Not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Do not exceed the recommended daily dose. Keep out of reach of young children.
I co-founded the company that makes this. Weigh everything above accordingly.