Is Dietary Variety Really That Important?

Dietary Diversity. Do we need more or less of it? Is dietary variety really that important? Or is the need to find endless variety actually derailing our healthy eating efforts? My tips this week answer this question, and the answer might surprise you.

Tara’s Tuesday Tips:

Is Dietary Variety Really That Important?

What do I have in common with the Crunch Fitness CEO, Anderson Cooper, Victoria Beckham, and Ricky Wilson? We all eat the same thing for lunch every single day. Is this a lovable peculiarity in our personalities or merely a lack of creativity? Could it, perhaps, be a telltale sign that we are amongst those that are driven by focus and determination? Whatever the reason why, we all find that eating the same lunch every day makes us more productive.

Any nutritionist out there reading this Tuesday Tips is cringing, I know. Variety, variety, variety! It has been drilled into us that we need to eat so much variety. From variety of color and textures to grains and fats. Let me be perfectly clear, you must have variety in your diet somewhere, I am not arguing that point. However, I strongly believe some level of food monotony is perfectly acceptable, and even good for your overall health!

Could More Dietary Variety

Actually Make You Less Healthy?

Indeed it can. A study conducted at UT School of Public Health concluded that people eating a wider range of foods ate more unhealthy foods compared to vegans who were forced to stick to a limited variety based on dietary restrictions. When you think about it, it makes sense, right? When I go to a restaurant, my menu options are limited to maybe 3 or 4 choices within my diet limitations versus perhaps 20 choices for my carnivorous dining companions. Likely, their choices are much higher in calories, fat, and additives.

There have been several other studies conducted over the last few years finding that people really do eat more calories when they eat a wider variety of foods. One study that stood out to me was a National Weight Control Registry Study. This study concluded that less variation in diet led to the subjects maintaining a larger amount of weight loss for a longer period of time. Did you catch that? Their boring eating habits allowed them to lose more weight and keep it off. I believe it, and I live it!

The Benefits of Having Less Dietary Variety

Convenience:
- Buy in bulk, cook in bulk, meal prep in bulk!
Stress reduction:
- Once you get the formula down to what meal you are going to repeat, your stress level about meal planning goes down!
Time savings:
- You always have the ingredients you need, you have become a pro at cooking it, you just bought yourself priceless time savings.
Money savings:
- When we shop with ‘variety’ in mind we tend to buy smaller or single-serve packages, we give in to spontaneous purchases hiding under the ‘variety is healthy and necessary’ headline. Many people put such heavy emphasis on food variety they let food quality slip and end up paying more for packaged, processed, expensive foods that sometimes go to waste anyway.
Reduction in food waste:
- When we know what we are cooking, we get to know how much of everything we need and can buy in quantities we will not waste.
Weight management:
- In addition to the studies I quoted above, we here at MVF are living proof! Taking the variety out of our lunch menu, but leaving the freedom of variety and experimentation in our dinner menu, has helped us maintain our weight!
Simplicity:
- It takes time on the front end to figure out what your favorite, go-to meal on repeat will be. Once you do, eat it often! Regular meal rotations eliminate the decision fatigue that typically comes along with the stress of answering the “what’s for dinner” or “what’s for lunch” question. Life simplified by simply accepting the fact that a certain percentage of your meals are allowed to be boring.

Why We Need To Incorporate SOME Variety

Ultimately, here is how I feel about this topic: a repetitive diet of healthy foods is far better than a diet consisting of a high variety of unhealthy foods.

But when does dietary variety actually matter?

Variety matters in fruits + vegetables:
- Our bodies need the nutrients + fiber that come from a variety of different forms of plants to fight cancer, create a diverse microbiome, prevent constipation, and ward off a whole host chronic health conditions.
With kids:
- Especially toddlers. They need to be exposed to a variety of textures, tastes, and smells. If not, they will have a limited palate and that is not good!
Plant diversity is a real and necessary thing:
- For optimal health, there is some data that suggests we should be eating at least 30 different plants per week. I support this and we live this one too! My lunch plants are set, that allows me the opportunity to have lots of plant diversity at dinner!
To maintain flexibility:
- If your go-to food is something that you can’t find year-round or goes out of season/availability you will end up paying exponentially more for it and stressing yourself out trying to find it! Be flexible. Adjustments are ok.
Variety prevents food boredom:
- As I mentioned, I eat the same lunch every day but not the same dinner. It gives me peace to know that I lock down the nutrients and calories in my lunch every day without even giving it a second thought. This gives me the freedom to create beautiful, interesting meals for dinner if I choose to do so.
Sometimes it is fun to change things up:
- Go out to lunch or dinner, allow flexibility in the schedule to accommodate time with friends or special occasions. Remember, food is more than fuel. It is love, family, culture, and helps us make memories. Cherish that. If the pandemic taught me one thing, it taught me that I miss eating with my friends and family! I will sacrifice my same oatmeal lunch to spend time with a friend.

Lessons We Learned From Regular

Meal Rotations in the MVF House

Variety is the spice of life?
- Maybe not. Most people do not want to admit they are this boring/lack of variety person. Maybe you will admit it when you have extra time to go do something fun because you are not obsessing over what to make for lunch! You do not need to think up something new, creative, and wonderful for lunch every day to prove you are healthy, creative, or spicy.
We don’t actually care what other people think of our food monotony.
- Free yourself of the pressures of society. If you know that every Wednesday your family likes to eat Mexican food and you have three recipes you fall back on and rotate through, so what?!?! Who cares?!?! If you know you are good at those 3 recipes, you can make them in less time than getting a food delivery, and everyone eats it?!?! Then you have time to go for a walk with your family because you aren’t in the kitchen experimenting every single night, hooray for that! Welcome to the world of meal routines. It is a fabulous place to be 😊.
Meals you eat alone are a great place to start.
- If you want to eat the same sandwich every day for lunch, do it! The rest of your family doesn’t need to. Trial + error, make adjustments, stick with what works.
It is actually easier to eat healthy when you establish an eating schedule.
- Your food choices become intentional and planned. That layer of spontaneity is taken out that often leads to take-out or packaged meals. Schedules work really well! In our home, we have a meal rotation. Each day of the week is labeled a certain food type. For example, Monday is salad day, Thursday is Indian day, Saturday is Thai. We have one for every day of the week, it’s true! The variety falls within those parent groups which narrows the decision down still allowing us variety within the different cuisines. Try it!