Unravelling the fate of food in the gastrointestinal tract is essential to better understand the health effects of food and fight against diet-related pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases and type-2 diabetes, and enable the design of food of high nutritional and sensory qualities to provide humans with a healthy diet. Research to date has mostly considered foods according to their composition. However, the role of the food matrix, i.e. the microstructure-level organization of nutrients and their interactions, in the digestive process was recently demonstrated. This paper summarizes the work done by different groups at the INRA to understand and model food digestion. Integration of the knowledge acquired will serve the development of a reverse engineering approach to design new foods purpose- adapted to meeting the nutritional needs of specific populations like infants or the elderly.

弄清胃肠道中的食物命运对于更好地了解食物对健康的影响以及与饮食相关的疾病（例如心血管疾病和2型糖尿病）作斗争，以及设计出具有高营养和感官品质的食物，是至关重要的饮食健康的人类。迄今为止的研究主要根据食物的组成来考虑食物。然而，食物基质的作用，即最近证明了在消化过程中养分的微观结构水平及其相互作用。本文总结了INRA不同小组在理解和建模食物消化方面所做的工作。整合所获得的知识将有助于开发一种逆向工程方法，以设计新食品，其目的是满足婴儿或老年人等特定人群的营养需求。