Understanding the Food Matrix
Managing your weight, balancing your blood sugar, and creating a positive relationship with food - all without calorie counting? Yes, it’s possible! Let me introduce you to the wonders of the Food Matrix.
The food matrix refers to the physical and chemical structure of food, including how its components - fibre, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, water, and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and antioxidants) - are naturally arranged. How food is structured affects how we digest and absorb nutrients, this then dictates how satisfied we feel, how full we feel and for how long, our overall hunger levels, blood sugar stability, and, ultimately, our weight.
The key concept I want you to grasp from this is how processing alters food structure and relative satisfaction as a result. Understanding this will allow you to optimise your health, manage your weight and generally feel great about your diet without having to count calories. It’s often fixating on calories but without considering the food matrix that means people go though cycles of yo yo dieting where they lose weight and then just put it back on again.
Let’s use nuts as an easy starting point to begin explaining this (bear with me).
Raw nuts have an intact, natural cell structure because we haven’t done anything to them. As a result, they require significant amounts of chewing and digestion to access the goodness and energy (calories) inside. That’s what calories are, by the way - just the energy contained within food. Their high fibre and natural fat content slow nutrient absorption and promote long-lasting fullness.
Now, let’s switch to roasted nuts. Roasting breaks down some of the cell walls, making nutrients and energy more bioavailable. They’re easier to digest, and as a result, you get access to more of the energy within them with less work, as well as a slightly lower level of satisfaction.
And then we swing to nut butter. Grinding nuts into butter destroys their natural food matrix, making their fats and calories rapidly accessible. Compared to the previous forms, which required chewing and effort to extract the calories, nut butter provides the same amount in the same weight but with minimal chewing, so accidental overconsumption can be much easier. If you’ve never compared 20g of whole raw nuts to 20g of nut butter, you might want to grab your kitchen scales and just have a look!
In simple terms, increased processing leads to decreased satiety per calorie consumed, as processing breaks down cell structures, making nutrients easier to absorb. This isn't always a bad thing, though (read on to find out). But first, I want to talk through the big bad guy of altered food matrixes: ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
The Curse of Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs)
Ultra-processed foods are engineered through intense processing to be addictive and hyper-palatable. They undermine natural hunger signals, distort taste perception, and increase cravings and overeating.
The key characteristics of UPFs are:
- Rapid Absorption: These foods lack fibre and intact cellular structures, so they’re super easy to consume. Think light, dry, crunchy, and easy to eat - crisps, cereals, snacks, and puffed crackers. They cause rapid blood sugar spikes and crashes, leading to hunger soon after eating. This is ideal for the manufacturers, as you’ll want to eat more. Not so great for us though.
- Minimal Effort for High-Calorie Intake: Whole foods require more chewing and digestion, whereas UPFs are engineered for effortless consumption. This means you can consume hundreds of calories with little effort. The problem of understanding this often lies in serving sizes: people often get pulled in by the idea of X number of calories per serving, which may look less than a whole food option. However, when you tally the satisfaction per calorie, you’ll find that whole foods like nuts leave you feeling full for longer, while something like popcorn will be a flash in the pan - quickly replaced by renewed hunger.
- Hyper-Palatability: UPFs are intentionally designed to optimise salt, sugar, and fat ratios, making them highly addictive and encouraging overconsumption for profit. The Doritos creator famously said that the only way to make Doritos more addictive would be to introduce a gambling element as they’d cracked the taste/packaging already. So a member of the team created the Super Hot roulette flavour where 1 in every 10 was super spicy to add a level of anticipation and risk. Clever, clever……!
- Failure to Trigger Satiety Signals: Since UPFs bypass the natural digestive process required for whole foods, they fail to trigger normal satiety mechanisms. So they drive you to eat more whilst also not telling your brain you’ve eaten at all. Think about how easy it is to devour a sharing bag of crisps or a box of cereal, and then have something else to eat relatively soon after. Try eating a can of chickpeas and you’ll slow down much quicker + be unlikely to want or need to eat anything else for a while.
How This Links To Weight Management
To achieve and maintain our ideal weight and body composition, we need to balance calorie intake and expenditure. To lose weight, we need to create a manageable energy deficit by using more calories than we take in. Our body then uses up fat stores between meals and overnight. To maintain weight, we want the intake and expenditure to be roughly equal, and we should focus on foods that help preserve or increase muscle mass, as muscle is our metabolic engine. We never want to lose muscle!
UPFs make it difficult to create periods of time when we aren’t hungry, meaning we’re going to struggle to create periods of time when we can use stored energy (fat) for fuel. And if you’re trying to lose weight you’ll always be fighting an uphill battle of cravings as well which is why people yo-yo through restriction and then weight re-gain.
Weight loss should never feel depriving or restrictive, or leave you feeling constantly hungry. By focusing on whole foods, your body will feel satisfied even as you create a calorie deficit. It’s about playing the system so you get more satiety per calorie consumed. And, as I mentioned earlier, this means choosing the least processed foods possible.
Why I Advise People to Avoid UPFs
Not just because I am mean/they are devoid of nutrition, but because they make your life harder.
- They’re calorie-dense with little fibre or protein, leading to frequent hunger.
- They disrupt appetite regulation by minimising the body’s natural response to fullness.
- They encourage habitual eating due to their addictive nature and rapid digestion.
My Top Tips for Optimising the Food Matrix for Better Satiety and Weight Management
- Prioritise foods in their natural form, such as whole fruits instead of fruit juices, whole grains instead of refined grains, and whole food fats instead of liquids. Avocados, nuts and olives over butter and cream for example.
- When you consume processed foods, which we will all do, aim for minimally processed versions. Go for steel-cut jumbo oats instead of instant oats or fresh chicken pieces instead of processed nuggets.
- Make yourself chew as this activates the hormones that tell you you’re full and slows down eating, leading to better hunger regulation.
- Place a bit of focus on fibre as this slows digestion and promotes fullness, you don’t have to go over the top but make it a priority. For example if you just don’t like brown rice and were having a meal with white rice then add a few more vegetables and maybe some lentils to improve satiety per calorie consumed. Or if having a pizza then add extra vegetables like mushrooms, peppers and broccoli to the top. I’d also have some extra protein too if possible.
- Think about low satisfaction liquids. These digest faster and don’t provide the same satiety as solids. Calorie-dense drinks like sweet coffees, blended frappe drinks, sodas, smoothies and juices pack a lot and are gone fast. You could switch a sweetened latte for an americano with a splash of milk then have something that makes you chew alongside like toast with eggs. That would give equal if not fewer calories and much longer lasting fullness.
- Recognise how food transformations affect your satiety. A whole apple is more filling than applesauce, and applesauce is more filling than apple juice. It’s not that you can’t have the processed ones but if you are struggling with frequent hunger or weight issues then consider moving back up the chain. Taking out UPFs for a couple of weeks will also really help you to work this out, and honestly if you try them again after that you’ll realise they taste and make you feel pretty awful!
Positive Processing
…That being said - not all processing is bad! Some forms of processing can actually make energy and nutrients more available, more digestible, and sometimes even safer:
- Cooking and Cooling Starches (Creating Resistant Starch): When starchy foods like potatoes, rice, or pasta are cooked and then cooled, they form resistant starch, which is good for gut bacteria, promotes fullness, and improves insulin sensitivity. Boiling potatoes to use over the weekend, freezing bread, and using previously cooked grains like rice will all help you to increase your intake of resistant starch.
- Soaking Legumes, Pulses, and Beans (Reducing Anti-Nutrients): Soaking or sprouting legumes reduces anti-nutrients, allowing better absorption of minerals and reducing digestive discomfort.
- Cooking Tomatoes (Enhancing Lycopene Absorption): Cooking tomatoes breaks down their cell walls, making lycopene (a powerful antioxidant) more bioavailable. Lycopene is linked to reduced risk of heart disease and certain cancers - which means that in this case, tomato sauce or cooked tomatoes trump raw!
- Fermentation (Enhancing Probiotics and Nutrient Absorption): Fermentation introduces beneficial bacteria that aid digestion, improve gut health, and increase nutrient availability. For example, fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut boosts vitamin C and probiotics, making it easier to digest than raw cabbage.
- Pasteurisation (Food Safety Without Major Nutrient Loss): Pasteurisation kills harmful bacteria without significantly altering the nutrient profile of foods like milk and juice. For example, pasteurised milk prevents foodborne illness while retaining calcium and protein.
- Blending into soups or Smoothies (Enhancing Nutrient Availability for Certain Populations). For people with digestive issues or difficulty chewing, blending food (like smoothies) can improve nutrient absorption without losing fibre (unlike juicing). For example, a blended green smoothie allows for easier digestion while maintaining fibre content.
The Takeaway
To wrap things up, understanding the food matrix is a game-changer when it comes to feeling good, managing your weight, and not stressing over every calorie. By focusing on whole, minimally processed foods, you’re giving your body the nourishment it needs while keeping hunger at bay. It's all about enjoying your meals and finding balance, not obsessing over calories!
So, next time you're choosing what to eat, think about how it will make you feel - and go for foods that keep you full and satisfied without the cravings!
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