Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you're listening to The Nutrition Diva Podcast Welcome.

Listener Ramsey writes, can you discuss the concept of food matrix and how it affects the

nutritional attributes of foods that we eat?

I heard it discussed on a podcast, and it seems to provide a strong rationale for why

a whole food diet might be better for us.

Is there any validity to this concept?

In a word, yes, there is.

Foods are more than just a collection of nutrients.

Those nutrients are delivered in what we're now referring to as a food matrix.

Now the term is thrown around a lot these days, and it's not always used to mean the same

thing.

Sometimes people are just referring to the level of processing involved, but it's more than

that.

Jose Miguel Aguilera, writing for critical reviews in food science and nutrition, defines

it this way.

The food matrix may be viewed as a physical domain that contains and or interacts with

specific constituents of a food, for example, a nutrient, providing functionalities and behaviors,

which are different from those exhibited by the components in isolation or in a free

state.

Translation.

The whole is not always equal to the sum of its parts.

Geotamas, a darshkala and a shakkumar, writing in the Journal of Pharmacognisy and Phytochemistry,

...