Tag Archives: FoodMatrix

Every food has a structure or food matrix. Altering this cellular structure changes how we metabolize nutrients. Nutrients that are extracted from their cell structure are referred to “acellular” nutrients. Nutrients that remain intact within their cell structure are referred to as “cellular” nutrients.

🟡Taco Tuesday – Authentic taste. My kind of convenience.

I grew up eating Mexican street food. Just one of the many blessings from my California childhood. I do add my own variation now – local heirloom tomatoes in season and a couple of cocktail tomatoes off season. Adding veggies makes it a meal and if my corn tacos were a product I could probably make a healthy meal claim on the label.

The items above are not product placements and this post is not sponsored by any of the brands pictured above. Instead, it’s an acknowledgement that the tools of modern processing have value – convenience and shelf stability. These tools can and often are used to mass produce and market cheap junk and indulgences. But those same tools can be used to help a dedicated home cook like me.

The refried beans are made with pinto beans, water, onions, safflower and/or sunflower oil, garlic, salt, spices – no added flavors, colors, extracts, sugars, or other enhancements. I found other canned refried beans products on the self, even on made with lard which is the traditional fat for Mexican refried beans. But the refried beans I selected had the simplest cleanest list so that’s the one I selected.

The chipotle sauce is imported from Mexico 🇲🇽 and is just the right level of heat for my kind of palate. Chipotle peppers are ripened jalapeño chiles that have been smoked, dried, and ground and they are an integral part of Mexican cooking. 

My best find was those corn tortillas however. I find commodity brands and hard taco unpalatable. Little to no taste and the wrong texture. Some brands even upset my stomach. The tortillas I remember savoring and enjoying were slightly chewy and with a distinctive taste of corn. And the tortillas above taste exactly like the ones I remember. That’s because they are manufactured with corn masa in accordance with nixtamalization – an ancient fermentation method which respects the corn kernel’s cellular structure.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Convenience counts. Even for a dedicated home cook like me. And with over 70% of the products on the supermarket shelf nowadays classified as ultra-processed, finding a product I like requires a strategy.

So here’s, what I look for – products that meet my taste expectations, are my kind of clean labeled (no flavors, gums, emulsifiers), made with simple recognizable intact ingredients, and save me time. I avoid cosmetic additives because I prefer to do my own seasoning and flavoring. Do I think cosmetic additives are dangerous? Not necessarily, but I’m okay with adhering to the precautionary principle and avoiding them for now.

That’s not how I feel about preservatives however. Why? Because I’m not okay with food poisoning. Or molds. For example, those beautiful corn tortillas don’t contain any chemical preservatives. If they stay on the shelf too long, they get moldy. So I store them in the freezer.

🟢Steel Cut Oats. Warm, chewy, sweet, and healthy.


A bowl of oatmeal made with steel cut oats is one of my favorite breakfasts. Especially appreciated when it’s cold outside and I want something warm inside my gut.

Steel cut oats are the closest version to oats in their whole, unprocessed form. Those unprocessed oats are called oat groats. Making oatmeal with steel cut oats is a time intensive process so it’s understandable why most of my fellow Americans prefer the option of quick cooked oats. But nothing can match the flavor of a well cooked soft, chewy, deliciously nutty consistency bowl of steel cut oatmeal.

The ingredient I use to make a bowl of oatmeal reads clean and un-trafficked: water, steel cut oats, blueberries, strawberries, pecans, turbinado sugar, butter, salt. You can see the pecans if you look closely for brown edges peaking out from time to time between oats and fruits. The ingredients I use are mostly minimally processed except for the culinary processed ingredients – sugar, butter, salt.

In one of those rare moments of consensus what tastes delicious to me actually matches what the friendly food police would allow me to label healthy. Whole Grains, Fruit, Protein (pecans are now protein foods) qualify my bowl of oatmeal as food. And as long as I limit my serving size to one cup, those nutrients of concern (added sugar, sodium, saturated fat) comply with current “healthy” thresholds.

In today’s food marketplace, oatmeals come in different degrees of processing. At one extreme is my bowl of steel cut oatmeal – time consuming to make and labor intensive to source and prep. At the other extreme is off the shelf instant oatmeal – boil in a cup, just add water, no added sugar made with novel or artificial sweeteners, often fortified with folate, and definitively #UPF ultra-processed.

And that brings me to the food matrix and cellular / acellular nutrition.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

The USDA defines “food matrix” as the nutrient and non-nutrient components of foods and their molecular relationships to each other. In other words the food matrix is the cell’s molecular structure.

There’s a complementary concept floating in and out of certain European research studies that focuses on cellular nutrients. The logic goes something like this – nutrients that remain within the cell structure – cellular nutrients – take longer to metabolize and by extension are considered healthier than nutrients that have been extracted then added back in.

Here in the US, both enrichment and fortification are common practice. And both processes require adding isolated nutrients back into a food product. Both are examples of acellular nutrients. Acellular nutrients are rapidly and completely digested in the stomach and small intestines.

Does the body care are whether nutrients arrive in a cellular structure or if these nutrients are acellular? Here in the US, the answer is pretty consistently that it makes no difference. Moreover, folate fortification has good research data to support a clear health benefit.

What can be said with certainty however is that our gut evolved over the millennia to metabolism cellular nutrients, not acellular nutrients.

🔴 Cute. Clean. Tasty. Ready to eat.

Consider the corn chips pictured above. No doubt about it, they’re tasty. Even more remarkable, the taste of whole corn is the predominant flavor. That’s the taste of my favorite corn tortillas which are made using a tradition processing method for corn – Nixtamalization. That’s when dried kernels of mature corn are cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution, usually water and calcium hydroxide. The processing makes it easier to grind the corn kernels and results in a characteristic taste. The label makes no mention of nixtamalization, but I do recognize a hint of that familiar flavor.

The ingredient list is simple and reads: organic whole ground corn, organic sunflower and/or organic safflower oil, sea salt, lime oil.

Although the FDA has yet to publish a final rule for using the word “healthy” on food product labels, it’s likely the product would be able to use the word because these corn chips meet the qualifications for another FDA nutrient guideline. As a general guide – 5% DV or less per serving is considered low for the three nutrients of concern – sodium, saturated fat, added sugars. And these corn chips check all three of those boxes.

The product also offers multiple certifications for added reassurance. Late July is a manufacturer with an impressive marketing approach. The chips are certified USDA organic, nonGMO, gluten-free, vegan, kosher, and whole grain. The product is designed to honor all lifestyles and make everybody feel comfortable. It’s a brilliant approach. If everyone at the party can feel comfortable with the same snack food despite allergies or lifestyle preferences, you only need to buy one brand of tortilla chip.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Personally I have a couple of problems labeling chips of any kind “healthy” based solely on a nutrient profile.

First, I like to scrutinize a product by looking through the NOVA lens. Potato chips and tortilla chips both fall into the NOVA Group 4 bucket. Most tortilla chips are made using an extruder. Extrusion is a process that uses heat and pressure to force food which has been reduced to a slurry or semi-solid state through a specifically designed opening to achieve a desired shape. These chips have a more delicate texture. Perhaps they were rolled into very thin sheets then precut into the familiar triangle shape? They also have a more nuanced taste – as noted above a whisper of niximalized whole corn. Still UPF but suggestive of a kinder gently degree of processing. The ingredient list for the product pictured above contains no “cosmetic” additives. Those are the additives that add flavor, color, sweetness, smoothness thus enhancing taste, appearance, or texture. As a result, the label is remarkably clean.

Second there’s a compositional issue. Folks eat food not nutrients.  Chips are served with dips. What dip will end up on the chip? Then there’s the issue of what foods are being displaced because the eater grazed on chips and dips before sitting down to a plate of food.

What makes more sense to my simplistic mind would be to say these tortilla chips are cute, clean, and very, very tasty. But yes, they are ultra-processed, so don’t spoil your dinner by eating too many, especially if what follows is a freshly prepared meals made with minimally processed ingredients like vegetables and meat or fish.