The food matrix is the physical structure of whole foods — how fiber, fat, protein, and micronutrients are arranged together. Jacobs and Tapsell’s argument is that food, not the nutrient, is nutrition’s fundamental unit, because structure governs digestion and absorption. One experiment isolates it cleanly: preloads matched for weight, calories, energy density, and eating rate, differing only in form, produced a gradient in how much people ate afterward — whole apple 85% of control, applesauce 94%, juice about 99%. And adding the fiber back to juice restored nothing. So it isn’t the fiber as a nutrient; it’s volume, chewing, and intact cell walls.
This companion covers what the matrix is, what processing does to it, and where the evidence stops. (5 min read)
Known defects on this page:
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