Eating a variety of foods is an important nutrition principle. It's so important that the official government guidelines on healthy eating state, "Eat a wide variety of nutritious foods" as their first guideline, ahead of guidelines that we limit saturated fat, choose foods low in salt, limit your alcohol and prevent weight gain. Study after study shows that those of us who eat a wide variety are in better health and live longer than those who don't.
Variety doesn't mean a different cereal in the cupboard or different biscuits for morning tea. It means a range of biologically diverse foods. For example don't just buy apples, mandarins and bananas but extend your fruitbowl to include rockmelon, blueberries, grapefruit and cherries (when in season). What's low in one fruit, you make up from another. Lots of different colours in your fruit and vegetables means lots of different antioxidants.
The same applies to grains. Don't stick to wheat in the form of breads, pasta or cous-cous. Branch out into rye (crispbread and bread), oats (porridge and muesli), barley (in soup), buckwheat and quinoa.
Some guidelines suggest eating 30 biologically-different foods each day. It sounds daunting at first but it's not that hard. If you make up a muesli at home, as I often do, you'll be mixing in 10 different foods - three types of nuts (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts), three types of seeds (pepitas, sunflower, linseed), one grain (oats), two fruits (dates, apricots) plus a form of sugar (honey) and that's just for breakfast.
Another way to increase the variety in your diet are to serve four or five different vegetables for dinner - in a stir-fry, it's not unusual to cook that many, often more. You can make up a large mixed salad with many different vegetables and herbs instead of just lettuce. Try different herbal teas and use different spices and herbs (they count as a vegetable).
Catherine Saxelby is a nutritionist and author of Nutrition for Life. Get more healthy eating tips at www.foodwatch.com.au
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