Food Systems & Exposome
Food is not only a source of nutrients. It is a structured biochemical input shaped by production, processing, preparation, consumption and biological transformation.
This section explores how food systems organise the exposures that human biology repeatedly encounters. It brings together publications asking how agricultural conditions, processing methods, food matrices, dietary habits, digestion and microbial metabolism transform food from a material product into a biological interface.
Interstitium uses this field as a conceptual space to examine what often lies between food composition and biological effect: structure, recurrence, transformation, context and exposure architecture.
The focus is not to replace nutritional composition as an object of study, but to place it within the wider systems through which food becomes biological input. Nutrients, phytochemicals, metabolites and food matrices are examined not only as measurable components, but as organised exposure patterns shaped by ecology, technology, culture and physiology.
The publications in this area develop conceptual frameworks, research perspectives and analytical approaches for understanding food beyond ingredient lists, nutrient tables and isolated dietary factors. Their aim is not only to describe this complexity, but to make it analytically tractable: as variables, comparisons and experimental questions.
At its core, this section asks how food systems become internal biological environments through repeated exposure.
Scope
This section examines food systems as generators of structured biochemical exposure.
It brings together publications on agricultural production, food processing, food matrix organisation, biochemical variability, metabolomic profiles, dietary patterns, digestion, microbial transformation and exposome-oriented interpretation. The central concern is how modern food systems shape the structures repeatedly encountered by human biology.
The focus extends across food systems science, nutrition, exposome research, metabolomics, food chemistry, systems biology, ecology and public health. Common to these fields is the need to move beyond composition alone toward questions of structure, recurrence, comparability and biological context.
Topics include food matrix organisation, processing-induced biochemical change, agricultural drivers of metabolite variability, dietary exposure architecture, phytochemical diversity, ultra-processing, fermentation, digestion, microbiome-mediated transformation, chronic low-intensity exposures, nutritional reductionism, and methods for comparing biochemical organisation across food systems.
This section is especially concerned with cases in which two foods, diets or production systems may appear similar in conventional compositional terms, yet differ in the organisation, recurrence or transformation of the inputs they deliver.
Guiding Questions
How do food systems shape the biochemical inputs repeatedly encountered by human biology?
Can two foods contain similar nutrients but differ in biochemical organisation, matrix structure and biological meaning?
How do agriculture, processing, storage, preparation, digestion and microbial metabolism transform dietary exposure?
Can modern food systems alter not only what humans eat, but the structure of what human biology repeatedly receives?
How do repeated, low-intensity exposures contribute to long-term interactions between diet, metabolism, immunity, microbiota and physiology?
How can food matrices, metabolomic profiles and exposure patterns be described, compared and linked to biological responses?
What kinds of variables are needed to make biochemical organisation in food systems measurable, comparable and experimentally testable?
What is lost when nutrition describes food mainly through nutrients, calories, isolated compounds or single dietary variables?
Selected Publications
The following publications develop these questions as conceptual frameworks, analytical perspectives and research-oriented essays. They are intended to clarify problems, define terms and open lines of investigation that can be further tested, refined and translated into formal scientific work.