Try this. Put a plain cracker on your tongue and don’t chew it. Just wait about a minute.
It starts to taste sweet. Nobody added sugar.
Quick answer: Amylase is the enzyme that breaks down starch. It cuts the long starch chains in bread, pasta, rice and potatoes into small sugars your body can absorb. You make it in your mouth and your pancreas. Digestive supplements like Eat Anything Rx add extra amylase at mealtime, alongside enzymes for protein, fat, fiber, fructose and beans.
That’s amylase, an enzyme in your saliva, turning the cracker’s starch into sugar right there in your mouth. It’s the only digestive enzyme you can actually taste working.
It’s also the first enzyme in the blend inside Eat Anything Rx, and it’s the reason a pasta night doesn’t have to end with you lying on the couch like a python that swallowed a goat.
What is amylase, in plain English?
“Amyl” is Greek for starch, and “-ase” is how scientists name enzymes. So amylase is literally the starch enzyme.
of your daily calories are meant to come from carbohydrates, and starch is the biggest share of them. That’s a lot of work for one enzyme.Source: National Academies of Sciences, Dietary Reference Intakes (Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range)
It was one of the first enzymes ever discovered, back in 1833, when two French chemists found something in sprouting barley that turned starch into sugar.
Brewers and bakers still call it by its old name, diastase.
Starch is how plants store energy, and it’s made of one thing: glucose, linked into chains hundreds or thousands of units long. Picture a string of pearls.
Your gut can only absorb loose pearls. Amylase is the pair of scissors that snips the string into short pieces, and enzymes on the lining of your small intestine finish the job.
| Station | Who’s working | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Your mouth | Salivary amylase | Starts cutting starch the second you chew, and keeps going inside each swallowed bite until stomach acid shuts it off. |
| Your pancreas | Pancreatic amylase | The main shift. Does most of the starch breakdown in the small intestine. |
| Your gut lining | Maltase and friends | The finishing station. Splits the short sugars into single glucose units you can absorb. |
Every piece of toast you’ve ever eaten went through exactly this.
Where your body makes amylase
Starch digestion is a relay. If you’ve seen our videos, this is the kitchen crew again, and amylase works the first and busiest shift.
And no, we don’t all make the same amount.
The gene for salivary amylase comes in a different number of copies from person to person, and populations with a long history of starch-heavy diets tend to carry more.
Why a big plate of pasta can feel so heavy
Starch is usually one of the easier things on the plate to digest. So why does a giant bowl of pasta with garlic bread sometimes leave you feeling like you swallowed a beanbag chair?
First, volume. Pasta nights rarely come alone. There’s cream, cheese and olive oil, and fat slows down how fast your stomach empties.
There’s just a line at the kitchen door. We cover that feeling in why you can feel heavy after eating very little.
Second, what escapes. Not every bit of starch gets digested up top. Whatever slips through heads to your colon, where gut bacteria ferment it and make gas.
3 free ways to help your amylase out tonight
- Chew more. The longer bread stays in your mouth, the longer salivary amylase works before your stomach shuts it down. Grandma was right.
- Slow the first five bites. Eating a sandwich over the sink at 12:58 skips most of the first shift.
- Watch the portion, not just the food. A restaurant pasta bowl can be three servings. A big load of anything takes longer to process.
A little is normal. A lot at once is how you end up quietly unbuttoning your jeans under the table.
That’s the whole logic of taking enzymes with a big meal: break more of the food down early, so less of it reaches the bacteria downstairs.
It’s why Eat Anything Rx is taken with your first bite, not an hour later.
Foods that bring their own amylase
- Bananas and mangoes. A green banana is chalky. A spotty one is sweet. That’s the fruit’s own amylase turning starch into sugar as it ripens.
- Raw honey. It contains diastase, the old name for amylase. Heavy processing reduces it.
- Malted grains. Sprouting wakes up the grain’s amylase. That’s why brewers malt barley and bakers add “diastatic malt” to bread dough.
of people from traditionally high-starch cultures carry six or more copies of the salivary amylase gene, compared with 37% from low-starch cultures. Some of us really are built for the bread basket. That’s not a character flaw, it’s genetics.Source: Perry et al., Nature Genetics, 2007
The catch: heat switches food enzymes off. Baked bread and cooked potatoes are great food, but whatever amylase was in the raw ingredients isn’t coming to dinner.
What an amylase supplement can (and can’t) do
A digestive amylase supplement is extra amylase you swallow with a meal so it can get to work on that meal’s starch. It’s usually made by fermentation with food-grade fungi.
We let a mold do what the sprouting barley did in 1833.
It only works when it meets the food
Take it right before or with the first bites. An hour later, it’s a kitchen crew clocking in after dinner service is over.
American adults said they’d dealt with bloating in just the past week. You’re in very good company.Source: survey of 88,795 US adults, Oh et al., Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 2023 (13.9%)
It also has to survive the trip through your stomach, which we cover in do digestive enzymes survive stomach acid.
One tool isn’t a toolbox
Amylase only handles starch.
It does nothing for the meatballs, the cheese, the salad or the fruit, and it won’t touch the sugars that make beans famous (those need a different enzyme, explained in why beans cause gas).
Real meals need the whole crew, which is why Eat Anything Rx pairs amylase with enzymes for everything else on the plate.
What does the research say?
How amylase works is textbook physiology. Your body depends on it for every bite of starch.
The research on supplemental enzymes is newer and more modest. A 2018 placebo-controlled trial of a multi-enzyme blend in the Journal of Medicinal Food found less bloating, gas and after-meal fullness than placebo.
That was a different formula from ours, so it shows that enzymes at mealtime are a reasonable idea, not how any one product will work for you.
No trial has tested the amylase in Eat Anything Rx on its own. The ingredient in our formula with the strongest human research is xylose isomerase, the fructose enzyme.
“Perfect before pizza, pasta, or anything indulgent … If you’re a foodie like me, this is your secret weapon to enjoy every bite — without the after-effects”
— Natia Mchedlishvili, Amazon Verified Purchase · Read more reviews
A quick note if you searched “amylase” holding a lab report: doctors sometimes measure amylase in the blood as a pancreas marker.
That’s a different question from digestion, and a number on a lab report is one to go over with your doctor.
The bottom line
Amylase cuts starch into sugars your body can absorb. You make it in your mouth and pancreas, and a cracker turning sweet on your tongue is amylase at work.
Taken with a meal, extra amylase adds help for the bread, pasta and potatoes on your plate. It doesn’t do the other enzymes’ jobs, and it doesn’t touch gluten or lactose.
If pasta nights and bread baskets are the meals that linger, try Eat Anything Rx with them. Want the full picture?
Read about the APLC enzyme blend, amylase’s fat-digesting sibling lipase, and enzymes vs. probiotics.
And if you feel full after just a few bites no matter what you eat, that’s worth reading about and worth mentioning to your doctor.
Amylase, plus the rest of the crew
Real meals are never just starch. Eat Anything Rx puts every enzyme your plate needs in one capsule.
- ✓APLC blend: amylase, protease, lipase and cellulase
- ✓Xylose isomerase for fructose
- ✓Alpha-galactosidase for beans and broccoli
- ✓Lacto-Wise probiotic and prebiotic
Common questions
What is amylase?
Amylase is the enzyme that breaks down starch. It cuts the long glucose chains that starch is made of into smaller sugars, which other enzymes then split into glucose your body can absorb. Your salivary glands and pancreas make amylase, and some foods and digestive supplements contain it too.
What does amylase do in digestion?
It starts starch digestion. Salivary amylase begins cutting starch as you chew, pancreatic amylase does most of the work in the small intestine, and enzymes in the intestinal lining finish the job by releasing single glucose units.
Where is amylase made in the body?
Mainly in two places: the salivary glands, which release it into your mouth, and the pancreas, which releases it into the small intestine. Pancreatic amylase does the larger share of starch digestion.
Which foods naturally contain amylase?
Raw honey (as diastase), malted and sprouted grains, and ripening fruits such as bananas and mangoes, whose own amylase turns starch into sugar as they sweeten. Heat switches these enzymes off, so baked and cooked foods do not bring working amylase with them.
Why does a cracker taste sweet if you hold it in your mouth?
Salivary amylase starts breaking the cracker’s starch into maltose and other small sugars, and your tongue picks up the sweetness. It is one of the few times you can taste an enzyme working.
Does amylase break down gluten?
No. Gluten is a protein, not a starch, so amylase does not act on it. No enzyme supplement makes gluten safe for people with celiac disease.
When should you take an amylase supplement for digestion?
With food. A digestive amylase works on the starch in the meal it meets, so take it just before or with the first bites, following the label. Eat Anything Rx is directed as one to two capsules before each meal.
By Dave Sherwin, PN1 Certified Nutrition Coach
More in the enzyme series: What Is Protease? The Enzyme That Unzips Protein · What Is Cellulase? The Fiber Enzyme Humans Don’t Make