Re: How important is a very varied diet?

[Guest guest]

> So is having a very varied diet essential for optimal health? Aren’t

> nutrients stored in the body to

> be made available when those nutrients are

> scarce during the off season, drought, etc?

I think so, if the nutrients are there to begin with and not depleted by the

diet.

According to Taubes in " Good Calories, Bad Calories, " the notion of a varied

diet being healthy really took hold after the " Golden Age of Deficiency

Diseases, " when they started identifying what vitamin deficiencies caused

beri-beri, scurvy, pellagra, etc.

All the deficiency diseases were associated with populations having a limited

diet based on some grain. (polished rice for beri beri, sailor's hardtack for

scurvy, sharecropper's corn for pellagra). So, the conventional wisdom became,

eat a varied diet.

It could also have said, don't base your diet on grains to the exclusion of

meat, roots, leaves, and berries.

>