The importance of variety in your diet
Something that is often overlooked is the variety within a diet and its relationship with health. Many crazy, popular diets are often routed in restriction: restricting calories, specific foods, food groups or entire macronutrients. However, health is actually found on the other end of the spectrum. In this blog, I’ll be explaining why a varied diet is actually your key to good health.
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Plant based foods - why is variety important?
A diet which is rich in a range of plant based foods is exposed to a wider range of micronutrients, phytochemicals, fibres, polyphenols, antioxidants, all important for disease prevention. The variety of fibre in particular has been seen to have a large impact on the gut microbiome. In a large study, they found that a diet which included 30 or more plant based foods per week had a wider variety of fibre, which supported the gut microbiome.
Fibre
There are many types of fibres that are found in different plant based foods. For example:
Cellulose is found in green plants
Arabinoxylans is found in wheat and psyllium (a seed).
Beta-glucans are found in oats, barley and fungi
Pectins are found in fruit, vegetables and legumes
Inulin is found in cereals, fruits and vegetables
Galacto-oligo saccharides found is pulses
Resistant starch in cooked and cooled starchy foods
All these fibres have different effects within the body due to their different characteristics, viscosity, fermentability and solubility. Therefore, having a variety of of plant based foods exposes the gut to a larger range of fibres, able to feed and support the gut microbiota in various ways. For example, fermentable fibres feed the gut microbiota, where short chain fatty acids are produced. These fatty acids provide the colon cells energy to produce to control hormones and create a protective mucus lining that’s important to prevent infection.
Heart disease, cancer and stroke are the most common causes of death in the UK, and studies have shown that diets high in cereal and wholegrain fibres are protective against heart conditions, type 2 diabetes, constipation, stroke and colorectal cancer. Also, a diet that’s low in fibre has been associated with diverticulitis (inflammation of the bowel), which can be improved and prevented by fruit and cereal fibres. Fibres which are more fermentable, like fruits and grains, especially oats, have been found to reduce “bad” cholesterol in the blood. The fatty acids released from fermentation enter the blood, which has been found to reduce blood cholesterol levels. Viscous fibres, like gums, pectins, psyllium, and beta-glucans, reduce the rate at which glucose is absorbed in the diet, steadying blood glucose levels and helping in the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes.
I hope I’ve been able to show you how the variety of fibre-rich foods are important to health.
Fibre Recommendations
2 - 5 years - 15g/day
5 - 11 years - 20g/day
11 - 16 years - 25g/day
16 and older - 30g/day
The UK population, across all age groups, does not get enough fibre daily.
Tips on increasing fibre variety
When you’re next planning meals, consider the variability of the wholefoods in your meals, and see if you can add more. For example:
Grate up vegetables like carrots and courgette into red sauces like Bolognese or pasta dishes.
When deciding on snacks, include fruit and vegetables with dips and yoghurts.
If you notice you rely solely on potatoes, rice and pastas, try to incorporate more legumes like quinoa, barley, lentils for more variety.
Think “what else can I add?”.
How to check if you hit 30
This sort of OCCASIONAL monitoring may help people and families check-in on how much variety they have. This may not be suitable for anyone with a history or active disordered eating, eating disorder or early on in their intuitive eating journey.
You can actually see if you had 30 different plant based foods throughout your week. If you were to list the foods you ate, you’d give one point to each type of:
Fruit
Vegetable
Bean
Legume
Wholegrain
Nuts
Seeds
Herbs and spices count as a 1/4 point each because of the small quantity used, but they still count!
For example, for breakfast on Monday you had blueberries and bananas on your porridge oats and a few cashew nuts, that would count as 4 points. If you had the same exact breakfast the next day, you wouldn’t get any more points because it’s about VARIETY. If on Tuesday you had wholegrain bread with cream cheese, romaine lettuce, spinach, a tomato, basil and black pepper - that’d be 4.5 points. So for Monday and Tuesday breakfasts, you’d already have 8.5 points!
Summary
I hope you’ve been able to better understand why variety of plant based foods are so important in the diet. Variety, not restriction, is the key to protecting health. If you’re struggling with a health condition like high cholesterol, diabetes, constipation, or want support in how you can ensure your diet is optimal for your health while maintaining a healthy relationship with food, book a free 15 Minute discovery call here to speak with me on a 1-2-1 basis.
Further reading and resources:
Bull MJ, Plummer NT. Part 1: The Human Gut Microbiome in Health and Disease. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2014 Dec;13(6):17-22. PMID: 26770121; PMCID: PMC4566439.
McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, Morton JT, Gonzalez A, Ackermann G, Aksenov AA, Behsaz B, Brennan C, Chen Y, DeRight Goldasich L, Dorrestein PC, Dunn RR, Fahimipour AK, Gaffney J, Gilbert JA, Gogul G, Green JL, Hugenholtz P, Humphrey G, Huttenhower C, Jackson MA, Janssen S, Jeste DV, Jiang L, Kelley ST, Knights D, Kosciolek T, Ladau J, Leach J, Marotz C, Meleshko D, Melnik AV, Metcalf JL, Mohimani H, Montassier E, Navas-Molina J, Nguyen TT, Peddada S, Pevzner P, Pollard KS, Rahnavard G, Robbins-Pianka A, Sangwan N, Shorenstein J, Smarr L, Song SJ, Spector T, Swafford AD, Thackray VG, Thompson LR, Tripathi A, Vázquez-Baeza Y, Vrbanac A, Wischmeyer P, Wolfe E, Zhu Q; American Gut Consortium, Knight R. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018 May 15;3(3):e00031-18. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00031-18. PMID: 29795809; PMCID: PMC5954204.
Zhao Y, Liu J, Hao W, Zhu H, Liang N, He Z, Ma KY, Chen ZY. Structure-Specific Effects of Short-Chain Fatty Acids on Plasma Cholesterol Concentration in Male Syrian Hamsters. J Agric Food Chem. 2017 Dec 20;65(50):10984-10992. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.7b04666. Epub 2017 Dec 8. PMID: 29190422.
https://mynutriweb.com/eating-to-improve-gut-health-do-we-need-to-eat-30-plant-foods-per-week/
https://www.nutrition.org.uk/healthy-sustainable-diets/starchy-foods-sugar-and-fibre/fibre/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445503/SACN_Carbohydrates_and_Health.pdf
https://www.wsh.nhs.uk/CMS-Documents/Patient-leaflets/ColorectalandStomaCare/5147-2Fibre.pdf