Limitations on the adage “eat a variety of foods”?

Abstract

benefit for meeting nutrient requirements up to a certain level of variety in food groups beyond which the meeting of nutrient requirements was not improved. In exploring issues of dietary quality and variety in a French population, Drewnowski et al (5) found that dietary variety scores correlated inversely with a dietary quality index, indicating that a good diet may be achieved at the expense of variety. In their study, dietary quality was largely based on total fat and saturated fat intakes. When they applied a dietary diversity score based on the number of food groups consumed per day, they found that low diversity scores were associated with low energy intakes. When Drewnowski et al examined dietary variety based on numbers of foods eaten, not classified within food groups, they found no increase in energy intake with increasing variety. In fact, they found improved dietary quality scores with increased variety. However, unlike the current study, the ranges of total energy intake were within 300 kcal (1.2 MJ) (6).