Why we exist

I built this because I needed it

For years I suffered with acid reflux and assumed it was normal. After all, it only happened when I drank alcohol or had super spicy food. My wife pressured me into getting it checked out, and I was told I had gastritis and would have to change my eating habits.

At the same time, the doctor sent me for a high-contrast CT, which showed that, despite my reasonably young age, I had diverticular disease.

It was an odd place to be. I’m not a sickly guy and I never really go to the doctor. Being handed two gut conditions, young, with no map for what to do next, was strange. And what annoyed me most? The advice I got was vague.

• Find your trigger foods, with no real guidance on how.
• Take a probiotic, and the one I was recommended cost £40 a week.
• Eat healthily, and for the diverticular disease that advice was “could be more fibre, could be less,” depending on who I spoke to.

I was frustrated, so I started doing my own research. The deeper I went, the more I saw that gut information falls into three camps.

1. Anecdotes that may work for one person but teach you nothing about your own gut.
2. Genuine science-backed research, which is hard to find and harder to understand.
3. Affiliate content, where the claims get questionable right about the time a product link appears.

The more I dug, the more I realised the same issues show up across multiple gut disorders. IBS, coeliac, reflux, and more.

Most people manage to power through and build a food routine that works for them. But that falls apart the moment the routine breaks. I like to travel, which of course means the diet changes. And there is nothing worse than being hundreds or thousands of miles from home, feeling like crap because you took a chance on a food you thought was safe.

So I decided to do something about it, for myself and maybe for others in the same position. I am not a doctor, just a guy who wants to live a little more comfortably.

I have spent years working in growth strategy for digital brands, getting the right message in front of more people. So why not turn that experience into helping the right information reach the people who need it? Take the best science-backed literature and make it simple to use.

So that is what I am building. My own database of foods, condition by condition, ranked against the strongest research, so you can check what you are about to eat in seconds and know whether it is a green light, a red one, or that borderline treat you can get away with now and then.

We show our sources, we say what the evidence measured, and we never pretend a food guide is a cure. Just clear, honest answers, so eating well with a difficult gut stops being guesswork.

Alongside it, a weekly, easy-to-digest newsletter with the latest literature, so you stay up to date on what to eat to feel more comfortable and get the most out of your food.

Welcome to Hard to Digest. Where we’ll make it all a little easier.