The Food Matrix Protects Dark Chocolate Flavan-3-Ols and Onion Flavonols from Degradation During In Vitro Gastrointestinal Digestion
Alice Cattivelli, Melissa Zannini, Maddalena De Angeli, Roberta Trovato, Angela Conte, Davide Tagliazucchi · 2025
Read The Food Matrix Protects Dark Chocolate Flavan-3-Ols and Onion Flavonols from Degradation During In Vitro Gastrointestinal Digestion by Alice Cattivelli, Melissa Zannini, Maddalena De Angeli, Roberta Trovato, Angela Conte, Davide Tagliazucchi (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12784765.txt.
Description
Alice Cattivelli and five co-authors show in 2025 that whole foods shield their healthy compounds through digestion. Dark chocolate and red onion carry flavonoids tied to health benefits, but the compounds must survive the gut to matter. Extracts and supplements strip away the food's own structure, which may be protective.
In a lab digestion model, about four-fifths of the flavonoids survived when eaten as whole onion or chocolate, against roughly half from plain extracts. The compounds broke down at different stages: onion's mainly in the intestine, chocolate's in the stomach. The authors argue the food matrix is part of the dose, favoring whole foods over extracts.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Alice Cattivelli, Melissa Zannini, Maddalena De Angeli, Roberta Trovato, Angela Conte, Davide Tagliazucchi |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 34 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |