Grilled broccoli, garlic powder, and FODZYME. That's the whole recipe! There's more to this story, though.
The powder you're seeing below is one serving of FODZYME spread over a few of the broccoli heads. FODZYME has no texture, as it instantly dissolves in your mouth. When I first tried FODZYME I expected at least some grittiness when it was mixed with food, but, nope, I can't notice it at all.
How enzymes help digesting broccoli and garlic
It was a no-brainer to use FODZYME on this side dish, since garlic powder is loaded with fructan (roughly 75% of its dry weight is fructan [1]). Broccoli is also high in GOS [2], and Monash reports that the heads can be high in fructan [3].
The primary GOS compounds found in broccoli are raffinose and stachyose. Monash does not list broccoli as a high-GOS food, but other researchers acknowledge that it is a potent source of galacto-oligosaccharides [4].
The human gut cannot digest raffinose, or any GOS, without assistance. Raffinose is broken down into galactose and sucrose by the enzyme α-galactosidase, which is one of the main ingredients in FODZYME. This enzyme is also naturally produced by colonic microbes, but many folks with digestive issues struggle to keep up with the gas-producing effects of raffinose.
In the colon, microorganisms break down raffinose and release short-chain fatty acids (acetic, propionic, and butyric acids), which are energy sources for the endothelial cells that line the gut [5]. In this process, however, gas is produced. In people with gut hypersensitivity or problematic gut-microbiome function, this gas can be extremely painful.
Broccoli is also high in selenium [5], vitamin C [6], and sulfur [7]. You are doing yourself a nutritional disservice by restricting full-sized servings of broccoli from your diet. Instead of restriction, try tackling the FODMAPs head-on with FODZYME. That way, you can enjoy all the nutritional and gustatory power that broccoli (with garlic powder!) can bring to your life.
References:
[1] Study on prebiotic effectiveness of neutral garlic fructan in vitro (2013): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453013000311
[2] Safety evaluation of α-galacto-oligosaccharides for use in infant formulas investigated in neonatal piglets (2017): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2397847317722828
[3] Monash FODMAP Diet App (2021) - "Broccoli Head" Listing
[4] Oligosaccharide Profile in Fruits and Vegetables as Sources of Prebiotics and Functional Foods (2012): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10942912.2012.680221
[5] Galacto-oligosaccharides and Colorectal Cancer: Feeding our Intestinal Probiome (2015): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4288025/
[6] Nutritional quality of organic, conventional, and seasonally grown broccoli using vitamin C as a marker (2008) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17852499/
[7] Selenium-Induced Toxicity Is Counteracted by Sulfur in Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica) (2017): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2017.01425/full
