A digestif is an alcoholic beverage taken after a meal, supposedly to aid digestion (hence the name). They’re usually highly alcoholic sweet or herbal liquers. But is there any evidence that digestifs actually do aid digestion? And if so, what specifically is conferring the benefit? Is it just the alcohol (in which case, I suppose any old drink will do)? Is it the fact that they’re consumed after the meal, or would taking them before or during the meal work as well?
No cite, and I hope one of the Doctor Dopers will come along and explain in more detail, but generally, the medical consensus is:
Digestifs, that is, with high alcohol content (as opposed to purely herb drinks, distilled with a non-alcohol method) DON’T HELP with digestion. HOWEVER, people feel that they do: because the alcohol in the stomach widens the blood vessels, making you feel warm and contended. But, the alcohol starts competing with the food itself (usually fatty foods, which make you feel bloated so you think of a digestif in the first place) for the resources of the enzymes made by the liver (gall and other juices), so in reality, it hinders digestion instead of facilitating it.
If you do need help with fatty foods (instead of just eating a bit less, and talking a 20 min. slow walk afterwards that gets the circulation going a bit which also helps - just don’t jog, that overtaxes), one of those enzymes in tablet form that breaks down lipids would be right. Or Lactase, if you get gas after drinking Milk. But for that, I would recommend consulting a doctor.
I don’t know which herbs, if distilled with water, help digesting fatty foods - some herbs help and are therefore used in cooking, like savory with cucumbers, or caraway with cabbage. Maybe WhyNot knows, she knows a lot about herbs.
I’ve been trying to figure this one out for a while, as part of my neverending quest to reconcile traditional herbal treatments with modern medical science. I don’t have anything like a definitive answer, I’m afraid.
What I was taught in herb school is that bitters (that is, the taste of bitter, which can be found in most “digestive” herbs and liqueurs) stimulate bile production, which aids in digesting fat from your meal. Personal experience does bear this out - when I myself have a meal high in fat and feel too “stuffed” afterwards, a few drops of gentian or angostora bitters speeds almost immediate relief of the stuffed feeling. If I stuff myself on low fat foods, then bitters don’t seem to do anything at all for me.
When I quit smoking, in fact, I used bitters after meals to produce a similar effect to smoking tobacco - that post meal smoke triggers nicotine receptors in the intestines to increase peristalsis and move things along (or so I was taught in my modern medicine focused Anatomy and Physiology class). Obviously, this has nothing to do with bile production, but the overall effect was the same - kickstarting digestion somehow to relieve the negative physical effects of overindulging.
What I haven’t been able to do is ascertain from a modern medical source whether or not bitters literally stimulate bile production (or cause some other biochemical reaction that would aid in digestion). It’s so taken as read by herbalists that no one bothers to cite their source for that, which I find very frustrating. It’s like asking a chemist to site their source that “water is wet”; it’s just something everyone “knows”.
I’m not happy with things everyone just knows. More often than not, they turn out to be hooey. But in the meantime, all I can say is that personally and professionally, I’ve known bitters and digestifs to produce good, clear and predictable results for more people than not when consumed after meals high in fat. And, in practice, that’s good enough for me. I don’t much care if it’s due to a biochemical reaction, a placebo effect or the blessings of Aslan, as long as it makes me feel better when I feel icky!