Top Digestive Enzymes of 2020

Updated 8/10/2020

In recent years, the market for Digestive Enzyme supplements has risen at an astounding rate.

New products and brands are constantly being introduced due to the massive spikes in research and public interest in the digestive health community. Sorting through the countless studies and formulations would be an overwhelming task for any person, so we’ve gone ahead and done the sorting for you.

We analyzed and rated over 40 digestive enzyme supplement brands and compiled a ranked guide to what we believe are the most universal and comprehensive digestive supplements on the market today.

Each of these brands has been carefully inspected at the most fundamental level for purity, safety, and consumer-reported potency, our rating system is based on 5 factors:

AAI Value: A product’s AAI Value, or Actual Active Ingredient Value, is the percentage of a product’s active ingredient which a supplement actually contains. A common mistake of the average supplement consumer is to automatically assume that a product contains 100% of what is listed on its nutrition label. You may be surprised to find out that over 70% of the supplements we tested contained less than 10% of their promised digestive enzyme values. Most supplements lose 1-4% of their nutritional values, over time, due to storage and transportation.

Enzyme Count: The total number of different enzymes in a digestive enzyme supplement.

Enzyme Diversity: How ‘complete’ an enzyme supplement is, in order to receive a high score in this factor a supplement must contain a wide variety of enzymes which synergize with one another.

Enzyme Concentration: A higher enzyme concentration score means that there are effective, high levels of each different enzyme a supplement contains. Based on a supplement’s FCC (Food Chemical Codex) Units.

• Protease – HUT (Hemoglobin Unit Tyrosine base), USP
• Amylase – DU (Alpha-amylase Dextrinizing units)
• Lipase – FIP, LU, FCCLU
• Cellulase – CU (Cellulase unit)
• Invertase – IAU (Invertase Activity unit)
• Lactase – LacU (Lactase unit)
• Maltase – DP (degrees Diastatic power)

Purity: This is a measure of how many toxins, contaminants, additives, dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary ingredients are in a reviewed supplement. A high Purity score means that the reviewed brand contains little to no contaminants.

Our Research Approach

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With so many digestive enzyme supplements now on the market, thanks to the surges of new research and evidence, we decided to separate the winners from the losers. We rolled up our sleeves, broke out the microscope, and got to work.

FIRST we had to find out where the raw materials were being produced for these digestive enzyme supplements, that was the only sure-fire way we had of measuring their quality of the products at the time of manufacture.

What we learned is that Digestive Enzymes are in short supply, the reason being that they take a minimum of 6 weeks to manufacture and put into capsules. Making a very pure, high-quality enzyme can make the process take even longer, not to mention that the demand for these enzymes has increased exponentially in the past year alone. Many companies, as we found out, cut their production times by cutting corners and even diluting the amount of enzymes in their supplement. For a supplement that relies on having balanced values of key enzymes, this is absolutely catastrophic. In every one of those cases, the enzyme supplement was rendered completely USELESS.

Supplement quality control standards in the United States are laughable, the unregulated industry is bloated and does little to protect the public from ineffective supplements. We learned that you can’t just rely on a cGMP certification, the majority of companies can no longer be trusted with supervising themselves. There was no actual way of knowing if a supplement was high-grade, concentrated, and free of contaminants – or downright dangerous. Of course, what kind of review site would we be if we let them get away with it.

Our strict process filtered out the vast majority of these enzyme supplements after just a week of basic testing. We tested over 40 different brands of digestive enzymes to see which ones contained sub-par ingredients or excessive fillers, putting them under the microscope and seeing what they were made of. We turned to the consumers themselves and asked them about their experiences and results. We collected all of the data, feedback, and results and reviewed our findings –  then cut the stragglers that couldn’t make the grade.

Our Research Results

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Over half of the supplements we reviewed were so bad they didn’t even make it past the first cut.

After the second round of exams and inspections we were left with little more than a handful of effective products to choose from.

An unbelievable amount of these brands simply lied about how many/much digestive enzymes were in their product. Some products contained less than half of their actual active ingredients. Some contained only trace amounts – there were even three supplements that didn’t contain any digestive enzymes whatsoever.

This huge lack of appropriate digestive enzyme levels dropped the majority of the reviewed supplements well below the minimum effective dosage levels for a supplement of this kind.

We’ve gotten feedback that some of our reviews seem cynical – and now you know why.

After the physical and microbiological tests, we had to find out whether the company selling the product was reputable – so, again, we turned to the people who had purchased from these companies for their personal experiences. We had to disqualify many brands due to the lack of an appropriate return policy, or simply because there were too many unanswered negative customer reviews.

But, there was a silver lining. Among the reports on so many useless, dangerous, or unreliable brands there were the rare brands that users reported as having remarkable effects, and these reports were far too frequent to be coincidental. Reports of healthier skin and hair, joint pain relief – “elevated mood and increased energy” was very common among these reports, people claiming that they “felt 10 years younger”.

These supplements often had enzyme blends very similar to one another, which is how we were able to discover the interesting way in which enzymes synergize with one another within the human body. It turns out that some enzyme manufacturers have scientific insight and vision that others simply do not.

After all of our tests were completed there were only 5 digestive enzymes – one in particular – which stood out among the rest. Consumers who used these brands consistently reported improved energy, mood, digestion, and healthy weight loss. This is our most exciting reveal yet, we are pleased to introduce the most recent miracle of natural health.

Our Top Picks:

#1 Enzymedica Digest Gold

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