March 17, 2025

The "food matrix" describes the physical and chemical structure of foods. How their components - fibre, carbohydrate, fats, proteins, water and micronutrients (your vitamins, minerals and antioxidants) are naturally arranged. This is important as the way a food is structured affects how we will digest and absorb nutrients, and that will then dictate how satisfied we feel and for how long, our overall hunger levels, how much or little our blood sugar will fluctuate, and as a result our weight - but not just the number on the scales, also our body composition so the relative amounts of fat to muscle we hold.

The key concept I want you to grasp from this video is how changing the food matrix through processing alters how satisfying a food is as a result. It’s understanding that that will allow you to eat in an ongoing healthful way in a happy, weight optimised body, without calorie counting. It’s often fixating on calories but without considering the food matrix that means people go through cycles of yo-yo dieting where they lose weight and then just put it back on again.

Right, let’s dive in. I’m going to use nuts as an easy starting example to begin to explain this.

Imagine I have a raw nut in my hand. These delicious morsels have an intact natural cell structure because we haven’t done anything to them, so they will require significant amounts of chewing and digestion to get to the goodness and energy a.k.a. calories inside. That’s what calories are by the way, the unit of energy within food. But yes, you’ve got to chew and work hard to get into that raw nut, which means it will keep you feeling full for a good while.

Now we switch to this side where I have roasted those nuts. Roasting breaks down some cell walls, making nutrients and energy more bioavailable. They will be slightly easier to digest but still provide decent levels of satiety, you’ll get access to more of the energy within them with less work. So what we’re starting to see is a move towards lower satisfaction per calorie consumed.

And then we slide somewhere over here to my jar of lovely runny nut butter. By grinding those nuts we have destroyed their natural food matrix, making their nutrients and calories rapidly accessible. Compared to the previous forms which we would have had to chew and work to get the calories from, nut butter will provide the same amount in the same weight but with minimal chewing and a lot less feedback to our brains that we’ve eaten that amount which makes accidental overconsumption potentially much easier.

If you’ve never compared 20g of whole raw nuts to 20g of nut butter as an experiment you might want to grab your kitchen scales and just have a look at the comparison in terms of how much you could eat, and how quickly.

So to simply summarise on that example. Increased processing equals decreased satisfaction per calorie consumed, as processing breaks down cell structures making nutrients easier to absorb.

That's not always a bad thing though. Stay tuned and I will give you some examples of how this can be hugely positive - and can actually sometimes work in our favour - but let’s touch on the potential negative first, which is that that exchange of processing for satisfaction can make balancing our hunger cues much harder.

Which brings me swiftly to the curse of modern diets. Ultra processed foods, or UPFs for short.

These are foods that are engineered through intense processing to be addictive and hyperpalatable, the perfect combination to undermine natural hunger singalling, distort taste perception so we don’t find natural foods as appealing, massively increase cravings and trigger overeating through rapid returns to hunger.

The key characteristics of UPFs are:

They lack fibre and intact cellular structures allowing for rapid absorption. Think dry, crunchy, light and easy to eat - crisps, cereals, snacks, popcorn and puff-like crackers. You’re going to get rapid blood sugar spikes and crashes, promoting hunger soon after eating. Which for those who made them is great, as you’ll eat more. But for you is going to have you eating in excess of your needs potentially quite quickly.

They will also offer minimal effort for the calories they contain as where whole foods like those nuts I was talking about require more chewing and digestion, UPFs are engineered for effortless consumption.
The stickler is serving sizes as often people get pulled in by the idea of X number of calories per serving, like 'buy these baked crisps as they’re under 100 calories a bag', which could look less than a whole food option - those crisps or popcorn versus nuts, for example.
But when the satisfaction per calorie is then tallied against that, you would be much more satisfied by a serving of nuts for a longer period. Your blood sugar would have been much more stable after eating them and your brain would’ve turned off from feeling hungry for a good while. The popcorn or crisps though, would be a flash in the pan though, lasting maybe 30-60 mins and then you’d quickly be hungry again. See what I mean about focusing on calories but not considering satisfaction as often not being super helpful?

Then we come to taste as these foods, as they are also specifically formulated to be extremely appealing by optimising salt, sugar, and fat ratios, this is literally done in a lab to work out exactly how to make our brains fizz pop and sing for the most intense response. The term used is 'hyper-palatable' but really we mean addictive. Sadly again this is all geared to encourage overconsumption for profit. Big food is big business.

And finally as a kicker - Since UPFs often bypass the natural digestive process required for whole foods, they fail to trigger our normal satiety mechanisms, which involve hormones and the stretch of our stomach as we've eaten. So they aren’t just making you want to eat more of them, you also aren’t getting proper signals that you’ve eaten at all, to turn off your hunger.

It’s pretty easy to devour a sharing bag of crisps or a box of cereal then eat a meal soon after. But try and eat a can of chickpeas and then think about having something else and you probably wouldn’t want to, or have room to.

Now this is a bit of a flippant comment, but there have been a few people recently coming out and claiming that 'Big Food isn’t out to get us' - which I strongly refute. But a notorious example of food engineering for addiction comes from the Doritos creator, who once said that they had created the perfect balance in terms of flavour, texture and packaging for rapid consumption, that the only way to make Doritos more addictive would be to introduce a gambling element. So then a member of the team came up with the idea of the roulette hot chips, where 1 in every 10 of that flavour was super spicy to add that element of risk, which triggers more brain fizzing and compulsion.

Anyway, we strive on!

So how does this all link in with weight management?

When we talk about achieving and maintaining our ideal weight and body composition, we need to tally our calorie intake and expenditure to be in balance with our goal.
If we want to lose weight, we need to create a manageable energy deficit by using more calories through physical activity than we take in through our food. Our body will then uses up our fat stores in the gaps between meals and overnight if we can create those gaps.

To maintain our weight long term, we then want the intake and expenditure to fluctuate around equal, with a focus on the kinds of foods we are eating to make sure we are prioritising good amounts of muscle mass. The number on the scales is only a tiny part of the story - we need to be focusing on muscle vs fat percentage, as muscle is our metabolic engine. The more muscle we have the more active our body is all the time and so the less work and attention we have to put on our energy intake because our metabolisms are higher. Again long term focus on calories versus muscle is what creates a cycle of dieting where calories go down, weight goes down but if that’s muscle not fat going then your metabolic rate goes down. If muscle goes up though, metabolic rate goes up though. So yes, always invest in muscle!

Going back to UPFs though, and what we were talking about, basically they make it impossible to create periods where we aren’t hungry.
Which means we are always going to be fighting an uphill battle with cravings or being starving so we can’t create those gaps when we would burn fat.

Weight loss should never feel deprivational, restrictive or really have you being hungry. If you focus on whole foods plus muscle-activating movement your body will feel wholly satisfied whilst you increase your energy expenditure.
It’s about playing the system so you get higher satiety per calorie consumed which if we scan back to the beginning… means going for the least processed foods as possible.

So just to summarise on that bit, the reason I advise people to avoid UPFs isn’t just because they are devoid of nutrition, but they will always make your life harder.
They provide lots of calories without being satisfying, leading to frequent hunger.
They disrupt appetite regulation by minimising the body's natural response to fullness.
And they encourage habitual eating due to their addictive nature and rapid digestion.

So what would be my top tips to use 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. They're gonna give you more satiety and more feedback that you've eaten them.

When you consume processed foods, which we will all do in some way, 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 down and promotes fullness. You don’t have to go over the top though, but make it a bit of a priority. For example, if you really just don’t like brown rice and you were having a meal with white rice, then add in 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, smoothies, sodas, juices - they all pack in a lot and are gone pretty fast. You could switch a sweetened latte for an americano with a splash of milk, and then have something that makes you chew alongside, like toast with eggs, for equal if not fewer calories and much longer lasting fullness.

And then finally I would try to recognise how food transformations through processing 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 awful and make you feel pretty awful too!

Ok, enough doom and gloom! Let’s talk positive processing now. Ultra processed is bad, but natural processing to increase nutrient availability, digestibility and in some instances safety, for example with pasteurisation, can actually be very good.

What we are considering is the form of processing, the level of processing, and what you are looking for when it comes to consuming a more or less processed food.

So, some examples.

When certain starchy foods (like potatoes, rice, or pasta) are cooked in a liquid and then cooled down, they form something called resistant starch, and that feeds gut bacteria, makes them more satisfying for lower carbohydrate levels, and improves insulin sensitivity - so your blood sugar regulation.
So you can boil a whole load of potatoes weekend and use them over the week, freeze bread, and use previously cooked grains like rice. All have more resistant starch than freshly cooked versions.

Soaking legumes, pulses and beans will reduce anti-nutrients compounds like phytic acid, which can block mineral absorption and cause bloating or digestive discomfort.
You couldn’t eat a raw lentil, but if you soak them in salted water and cooked them, you can. And you could even make them into a dip or soup to help further breakdown that food matrix for even easier access to the nutrition in them. So that's a good example of making nutrients more available.

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.
Using tinned tomatoes or roasting fresh tomatoes, will give you much more lycopene than just having fresh ones.

Fermentation introduces beneficial bacteria that aid digestion, improve gut health, and increases nutrient availability.
Fermenting raw cabbage into sauerkraut boosts vitamin C levels and adds probiotics, and it’s much it easier to digest than raw cabbage. Fermenting dairy will decrease lactose concentration so people can find this more digestible as well as getting that probiotic element in too.
Fermentation can also be a preserving technique to allow access to foods at times when they wouldn’t naturally be available as well.

There are so many more, but I’ll stop there!

So yes processing isn’t always bad, it's just about understanding where it can be helpful and where it can hinder progress or make your life harder. It’s about choosing the right kind of processing that supports health rather than undermines it.

I hope you enjoyed this video. Do leave a comment if you did, or if you have a question. I will see you next time!

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