How it works
Every food starts with the same questions: What does the label establish? What has the manufacturer documented? What can be independently confirmed? And what has actually been measured in the finished food?
Explore Matter of RecordThe process
01
Recipes change. We tie every piece of evidence to a specific product and formula, and when we test, to the specific bag we bought.
02
The label, what the maker has documented, regulatory records, outside sources, and our own testing. Every item keeps a record of where it came from.
03
What a recipe is built to contain and what's actually in the finished food are different questions. We never let one answer the other.
04
Where evidence is missing, we leave the gap open. We don't guess, and we don't count a gap as a failure.
05
What's been demonstrated, what fell short, what no one has shown us yet, and any separate reductions that can apply when a qualifying serious problem is confirmed.
Designed and measured
Crude protein
Label says
At least 26%
Calcium
Label says
At least 1.0%
A minimum on its own can't answer both sides of that question, so the check stays Not Yet Verified until the evidence can.
Evidence provenance
Information on the label or in documents the manufacturer supplied or published.
We checked it with the laboratory, registry, certifier or other independent source behind it.
Matterdays independently checked or authenticated the evidence.
Matterdays purchased a retail sample and had the finished food independently tested.
A single food usually has evidence at several of these levels. We show the mix, not one grade for the whole food.
Uncertainty
We say so.
Not Yet Verified
We don't assume what's inside a document we haven't seen.
Not Yet Verified
A label can answer one part of a question without answering all of it.
Kept separate
We don't combine conflicting formula information into one imaginary version.
Reading a result
Confirmed
The evidence shows this requirement is met.
Criteria Not Met
We checked, and it wasn't.
Not Yet Verified
No one has shown us enough to say either way.
Standard Effects
Separate reductions that can apply when a qualifying serious problem is confirmed.
Confirmed is not a percentage, a grade or a measure of how healthy a food is, and it does not prove that one food will produce better health outcomes than another.
A higher Confirmed figure simply means more of the applicable Standard has been demonstrated.
Independent testing
We purchase the food at retail, record the lot, keep a chain of custody, and send the sample to an appropriate independent laboratory. The result stays tied to that exact sample. A later lot is a new record, not proof that nothing changed.
Traceability
Every result opens up. You can see the key findings, the evidence and sources, the full check-by-check review, and the calculation itself.
The principle
We make the line between what's known, what's demonstrated and what's still unknown unusually easy to see.