Variety & Balance: Beneficial or Not?

Walking through the grocery store is an archeological expedition if you understand what you’re looking at. But, alas! Ignorance is bliss.

In the book, The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker, the detailed history of processed food is laid out for all to see. Yet here we sit, surrounded by endless variations of processed carb-age.

The Food Environment Propaganda

Food environment propaganda is as plentiful as the endless isles in the supermarket of ‘edible’ non-nutritional products. The required labels are a map of confusion and illusion.

Variety is falsely presented via colorful packaging and cliché slogans.

‘Balance’ is a pretentious word used in the context of giving correct/ authoritative advice regarding how to create a meal.

The Illusion of Variety

In the current illusory food environment, true variety is limited. Therefore, the word itself is an oxymoron in this context. Many fruits and vegetables belong to the same family even though they look different or have different names.

For example, the cruciferous/ brassica family includes broccoli, Brussel sprouts, all cabbages, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, and turnips. The nightshade family includes all peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants.

People seek variety for fear of boredom—understandable! But we wouldn’t fear boredom if we lived closer to our food sources and experienced the reality of processing our food directly. For example, if we got it via hunting, ranching, fishing daily.

Balanced Diet: A Lesser Propaganda?

The idea of a ‘balanced diet’ seems reasonable and beneficial, but how did this idea develop? Once again, commercial entities promoted this idea to influence consumers as well as educational institutions. It’s not based on scientific principles.

A ‘balanced meal’ implies eating from multiple food groups in the same meal. As we all ‘know’, this is best, correct?  NOT. It is for precisely this reason that many people have digestive problems. They have no idea which food product caused the problem and then assign blame randomly to one or two of the ingredients.

Food breakdown, digestion, and metabolism are complex processes that require energy to complete. We take it for granted that we should be able to eat anything and everything while having no problems with the complex processes that will inevitably follow.

Even if there are no apparent digestive problems, there could be pathological responses in other parts of the body that are directly related to the foods we eat. Have you heard of inflammation arising from gut dysfunction? There may not be obvious symptoms coming from the gut, but pathologies are noted elsewhere in the body.

To Sum Up

In conclusion, I propose that variety and balance as it relates to our human sustenance are both illusory concepts (when applied to how we eat). There are strong influences on human food-seeking preferences and behaviors, but believing we are choosing variety and balance is not one of those influences.

Trade these concepts for the road well-traveled. Know what your body does and doesn’t need, not by following the latest fad out there but through individualized movement protocols, food management information, and support of the brain-mind physiology offered by our holistic health coach. Bring your body as close to its natural state as possible through precision nutrition coaching for your body as opposed to someone else’s.

Reach out to the online health coach for more information.