Allaine Mark

The Variety Allaine Mark

While much nutritional advocacy has focussed on staples, this has more to do with food security for energy and protein intakes than it does for optimal health. The focus on staples also does not encourage biodiversity, which in itself is increasingly crucial for healthy environments. The more explicit nutritional significance of achieving biological variety in one's diet is that it helps ensure an adequate intake of essential nutrients and other components, it dilutes potential adverse food factors, and it recognises the factors in food important for health which are currently not regarded as essential nutrients. These are, in the main, plant food factors, now referred to as either phytochemicals or phytonutrients. For these reasons, the latest trend in nutrition science is more. But more means 'different', not more of the same. Variety means that we choose to eat a mixture of foods across the range of food types (cereal, fruit, dairy) and a mixture from within food types (rye, barley, wheat).