Dietary Diversity is Bad Now?

Actually, no it’s not. Researchers and the media are just idiots sometimes.

“Fast Food tray with a greasy burger, crinkle cut fries, and soda” by Christopher Flowers on Unsplash

I was scrolling through the Health section of Google News this morning when I saw this turd of a headline: “A Varied Diet Could Lead to Health Problems, Research Suggests.”

As soon as I read this headline, my bullshitometer pegged on GTFO. I immediately assumed that the news outlet, in this case Newsweek, dropped the ball and cobbled together some clickbaity headline hugely divergent from the actual research.

So, I did what I always do — consult the actual research paper.

This new “research” happened to be an advisory from the American Heart Association informing the plebs of the inscrutable conclusions they’d reached after reviewing dietary intake data spanning 2000–2017.

The top minds at the American Heart Association wrote in the abstract of this paper that “Current data do not support greater dietary diversity as an effective strategy to promote healthy eating patterns and healthy body weight.”

Now, I’m trained as a medical communications professional. A big part of what I do is translate research findings into language average Joes and Janes can understand; researchers typically do a shit job communicating their results to the public.