Using data from 6,814 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a study of whites, blacks, Hispanic-Americans and Chinese-Americans in the United States, the authors measured diet diversity through different measures. In multivariate models, neither count nor evenness was associated with change in waist circumference (WC) or incident T2D. At ten years, higher diet quality was associated with about a 25 percent lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. "An unexpected finding was that participants with greater diversity in their diets, as measured by dissimilarity, actually had worse diet quality. "These results suggest that in modern diets, eating 'everything in moderation' is actually worse than eating a smaller number of healthy foods." The study was published today in PLOS ONE. Funding came from a research supplement grant awarded to Otto by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, as part of a larger research grant number R01HL085710, whose principal investigator is the senior author Mozaffarian. "'Eat everything in moderation' has been a long-standing dietary recommendation, but without much empiric supporting evidence in populations. A recent study showed a prospective inverse association between dietary diversity of fruit and vegetable intake and risk of T2D, which was independent of the amount of fruit and vegetable consumed [12]. The present study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects and patients were approved by the affiliated institutional review boards affiliated with each of the participating academic centers (Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Minnesota, Wake Forest University). We selected quality scores based on scientific evidence for favorable associations with CVD and T2D, including the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) score [7, 9, 23], the Alternative Healthy Eating (aHEI) Score [7, 24–26], and an a priori dietary pattern score previously developed in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study [27]. In other words, more diversity in the diet was not linked to better outcomes. Researchers 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. Indeed, our results show inverse correlations between dietary dissimilarity and diet quality, and positive associations with metabolic risk. Greater food count and evenness were associated with higher intakes of both healthy and unhealthy foods, resulting in weak correlations with overall diet quality scores. These included the total count (number of different foods eaten in a week), evenness (the distribution of calories across different foods consumed), and dissimilarity (the differences in food attributes relevant to metabolic health, such as fiber, sodium or trans-fat content). 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.
– Have a favorite food you find yourself eating day in and day out? If it's healthy, new research suggests you should stop feeling guilty about it, because eating "everything in moderation" may not be as healthy as we think. Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers say that based on a survey of the number of foods that 6,814 white, black, Hispanic, and Chinese Americans eat in a week, people who ate the greatest variety of food actually had the worst metabolic health and diets. Those achieving greater diversity "were eating less healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, and more unhealthy foods, such as processed meats, desserts and soda," says the lead researcher. Not surprisingly, these were the people with thicker waistlines and higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes 10 years later. "Americans with the healthiest diets actually eat a relatively small range of healthy foods," one author at Tufts University says in a press release. "These results suggest that in modern diets, eating 'everything in moderation' is actually worse than eating a smaller number of healthy foods." Meanwhile, recent research shows that processed, red meats likely increase the risk of certain cancers, while low-fat diets don’t necessarily result in weight loss. In other words, "The way we’re used to eating is wrong," reports Forbes. (If you really want to lose weight, research says, don't eat animals.)