The FODMAP diet is designed to help people determine if they have difficulty digesting certain foods and what those are. It is quite a drastic diet, but it can provide many enlightening insights.

During the elimination diet, you eliminate the different FODMAP groups from your diet to see if that makes a difference. Then, during the reintroduction phase of the diet, you introduce the different FODMAP groups back into your diet. This way you find out which FODMAP groups you respond to.

Because the FODMAP diet requires you to temporarily limit or exclude many food groups and make a major change in the things you eat, it is a drastic diet. And such a strict approach is not necessary for everyone.

Sometimes you can use other tools to gain better insight into which foods you react to and you can make adjustments based on that.

A great tool for this is the Intoleran intolerance test.

More clarity about your intolerance profile with the intolerance test from Intoleran

The Intoleran intolerance test helps you gain insight into foods to which you may react based on a number of foods. It goes like this:

Step 1: In the first step of the test you will be shown different foods. Here you can click on products that you think you are sensitive to.

Step 2: In step two you will see which food groups the products you have selected fall into and which possible intolerances may occur.

What is also very useful is that in this step you can see which other products belong to the FODMAP groups that emerged in step 2. That may provide more insight into other products to which you are sensitive.

Step 3: In step three you will get more information about how digestion works and the role of digestive enzymes.

Step 4: in the last step of the test you will receive personal advice based on what you have completed in the test. This is a handy overview that you can print out.

You can take this information with you to your doctor or dietician for further examination.

For example, if you suspect lactose intolerance or fructose intolerance, you can have yourself tested by your doctor to determine this.

On this page, you can complete the Intoleran intolerance test.

Why it can be handy to do an intolerance test

Sometimes it is quite difficult to find out which intolerances are associated with a reaction to certain foods.

For example, as a child I didn’t like milk. My parents tried to get me to drink it every day, but I really didn’t want to. No one thought about lactose intolerance at the time.

When I was a little older and went to the doctor because I felt bloated after eating dairy products, he advised me to do a lactose intolerance test.

It was determined that I had a lactose intolerance, but I had not made the connection with the dairy products I ate.

It wasn’t until I started looking into the FODMAP diet and the different FODMAP groups that I started to see the connections between different products.

This intolerance test can help you discover the links between different foods and find out what you may be reacting to.

Then you can exclude this product group from your diet or eat the products in smaller quantities. You can also see if digestive enzyme supplements can help you.

Digestive enzymes that can help to digest different food groups

Intoleran offers various digestive enzymes that can support the digestion of different product groups.

You will find the following products on their website:

• Lactase: this is an enzyme that helps digest lactose from food in people who have difficulty digesting lactose. You can read more about lactase enzymes in this blog.
• Fibractase: This is an enzyme that aids in the digestion of complex carbohydrates, such as fructans and galactans. These can be found in wheat, onion, garlic, and legumes, among others. The enzyme contained in this product is alpha-galactosidase. You can read more about fibractase in this blog.
• Fructase: This product contains the digestive enzyme xylose isomerase. The enzyme xylose isomerase helps with the digestion of fructose from food. You can read more about fructase in this blog.
• Quatrase: this enzyme is a combination of the products above and contains the digestive enzymes lactase, alpha-galactosidase, xylose isomerase, and invertase. This enzyme mix helps with the digestion of lactose, fructans, galactans, fructose, and sucrose. You can read more about quatrase in this blog.
• DAO and DAO-mini: these products contain the DAO enzyme, which helps with the digestion of histamine from food. The DAO-mini only contains the DAO enzyme and the DAO-plus is supplemented with quercetin and vitamin C for even more complete support. A vegetarian variant is the product cozidase. You can read more about it on this page.

I have a lactose intolerance myself and I use Intoleran’s lactase enzymes to, for example, drink a cappuccino or eat an ice cream outside the house.

Because I also know that I react to fructose, I always have a pack of fructase with me. If I have doubts in a restaurant whether something contains honey, for example, I take a fructase capsule.

In addition, I also react to onion and garlic, so I usually also have fibractase or quatrase with me (yep, my handbag is always full of a whole enzyme collection).

I always try to compose my meals in restaurants in such a way that they do not contain anything difficult for me to digest, but if I have doubts about this, I take one or more enzyme capsules with it.

Would you like to know more about how these digestive enzymes work? This page from Intoleran explains exactly how a digestive enzyme works in your body.

Would you like to know more about how to take these enzymes, how many you can use per day, and more frequently asked questions? Then view my blog with frequently asked questions about these enzymes.