DigestFlow Ingredients and the Dose of Each One

Coffee beans that were never roasted. Roasting is what destroys most of a bean’s chlorogenic acids, which is why the unroasted extract is the one sold for them, and this row is standardised so that half its weight is that compound family.

Its claim on a digestive label rests on poor absorption rather than good. A 2026 review in Nutrition Reviews describes a large proportion arriving in the colon intact, where resident bacteria degrade it into caffeic and quinic acids and short-chain fatty acids.

Its more famous literature is about body weight, and that is where the amount here falls short. Three pooled randomised trials in 103 people tested 500 mg of chlorogenic acids a day. This row supplies about 65 mg.

The aromatic compound responsible for the smell of red raspberries, also present in kiwifruit, peaches and apples, and produced at scale for flavour and fragrance long before anyone sold it in a capsule.

This is the weakest row on the panel. The 2021 review of the compound summarises a record built on cells and rodents, with PPAR-alpha activation as the proposed mechanism, and states in its own abstract that it is marketed at very high doses in spite of a lack of reliable human research.

There is no gut-specific human trial to summarise, at any dose. A reader deciding on this product should treat this row as costing nothing and proving nothing.

Dried rind of the Malabar tamarind, a souring agent in South Asian cooking for centuries, standardised here so that half its weight is hydroxycitric acid. That gives about 65 mg of HCA per capsule.

The pooled randomised trials ran at gram quantities of HCA a day and produced a mean difference against placebo of 0.88 kg, which the authors described as small and of uncertain clinical relevance. One of the included trials reported gastrointestinal adverse events twice as often on HCA as on placebo, which is worth knowing on a product sold for digestive comfort.

It also brings the panel’s one real safety file with it, set out in full on side effects. The short version is that the case reports involve gram-scale daily intakes rather than 65 mg.

Caffeine with the water removed, which is the form used wherever a precise amount is wanted. At 138 mg this is the largest row on the panel and roughly what a strong mug of brewed coffee delivers.

It is also the row with the most direct evidence about the organ this product is sold for. Ambulatory manometry in twelve healthy volunteers found caffeinated coffee produced colonic motor activity of about the same magnitude as a 1,000 kcal meal, 60 per cent stronger than water and 23 per cent stronger than decaffeinated coffee.

That last figure cuts both ways: decaffeinated coffee produced most of the same effect, so caffeine is one contributor rather than the whole explanation. A randomised trial of pure caffeine after laparoscopic colectomy found 100 mg and 200 mg doses no better than placebo at restoring bowel activity.

The most heavily standardised row on the label: 98 per cent polyphenols, 75 per cent catechins, 45 per cent epigallocatechin gallate and under 3 per cent caffeine. That works out at roughly 58 mg of EGCG and about 98 mg of total polyphenols per capsule.

Catechins are poorly absorbed too, so a substantial fraction reaches the colon. A randomised, double-blinded trial gave thirty-three people matcha or a placebo drink for two weeks and sequenced their stool: beta-diversity shifted significantly in the tea group and not in the placebo group, with thirty genera changing against three.

The 58 mg figure also matters for safety, and there it is reassuring. The United States Pharmacopeia review of green tea extract case reports found the intakes involved began around 140 mg of EGCG a day. NCCIH sets out the same distinction between drinking tea and taking a concentrated extract.