活跃成分还将经历研磨和其他处理过程，然后被烹饪，还需要在口腔中就见效（orally active，大部分蛋白质药物不具备这一性质 ） ， 因为在胃中它们会被消化。
The active agent would then need to survive milling and other processing, and then cooking, and it would need to be orally active, which protein drugs most often are not, because they are digested in the stomach.