Robert Lustig on the Metabolic Matrix: recommends

Dr. Robert Lustig recommends judging food by three precepts he calls the “Metabolic Matrix”: protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain. He says any food satisfying all three counts as healthy regardless of its processing level — a framework published in Frontiers in Nutrition in March 2023.

His stated reasoning is that processing level alone (the NOVA classification) is an insufficient measure of food quality: current U.S. ultra-processed products, he says, fail the metabolic-matrix test, but a re-engineered product could theoretically pass it. The Matrix was the standard he used in his multi-year project reformulating Kuwaiti Danish Dairy Company products (see his KDD initiative), where 18 of 180 products were re-engineered to meet the three precepts and tested in clinical trials.

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