Diet diversity may lead to poor metabolism

A new study has revealed that the 'everything in moderation' diet might lead to poor metabolic health.

Author Marcia C. de Oliveira Otto of the UT Health School of Public Health said that 'eating everything in moderation' had been a long-standing dietary recommendation, but without much empiric supporting evidence in populations.

Otto said that they wanted to characterise new metrics of diet diversity and evaluate their association with metabolic health.

In the study, using data from 6,814 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of study of whites, blacks, Hispanic-Americans and Chinese-Americans, the authors measured diet diversity through different measures.

They evaluated how diet diversity was associated with change in waist circumference five years after the beginning of the study and with onset of Type 2 diabetes 10 years later. Waist circumference is an important indicator of central fat and metabolic health.

They found that more diversity in the diet was not linked to better outcomes. Participants who had the greatest food dissimilarity actually experienced more central weight gain, with a 120 percent greater increase in waist circumference than participants with the lowest food dissimilarity.

Otto said an unexpected finding was that participants with greater diversity in their diets, as measured by dissimilarity, actually had worse diet quality, adding that they were eating less healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables.

Otto concluded that this study might help explain the relationship between greater food dissimilarity and increased waist circumference.

The study is published in the Journal PLOS ONE.