Dietary Diversity and Nutritional Health

Dietary diversity, defined as the variety of foods or food groups consumed over a given period, is recognised as a cornerstone of diet quality and is closely linked to nutritional adequacy and the prevention of non-communicable diseases. A diverse diet enhances the likelihood of meeting micronutrient requirements and supports balanced macronutrient intake, yet its measurement has evolved from simple food‐group counts to multidimensional indices capturing food coverage, evenness and complementarity. Emerging evidence highlights that diversity within food groups—such as a broader range of fruits, vegetables or whole grains—can further bolster dietary quality without promoting excessive energy intake. Globally, strategies to promote dietary diversity must balance cultural preferences, food system sustainability and socioeconomic constraints, recognising that access to a varied, nutrient-dense array of foods is critical for reducing malnutrition, obesity and diet-related chronic conditions. Advances in molecular and functional diversity indicators underscore the potential for more precise tracking of diet quality at both individual and population levels.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Dietary Diversity and Nutritional Health publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in dietary diversity and nutritional health across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Dietary Diversity Score (DDS): metric quantifying the number of different foods or food groups consumed over a defined reference period.

Food Evenness: measure of how evenly food items or groups contribute to overall intake, reflecting balance within the diet.

Plant Metabarcoding Richness (pMR): count of distinct plant taxa detected in biological samples via DNA metabarcoding, serving as an objective proxy for botanical dietary diversity.

Energy-Adjusted Dietary Inflammatory Index (E-DII): composite score estimating the inflammatory potential of diet, standardised for total energy intake to permit comparisons across individuals.

References

1. Exploring Multidimensional and Within-Food Group Diversity for Diet Quality and Long-Term Health in High-Income Countries. Advances in Nutrition (2024).
2. Diversity of plant DNA in stool is linked to dietary quality, age, and household income. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2023).
3. Dietary Diversity and Inflammatory Diet Associated with All-Cause Mortality and Incidence and Mortality of Type 2 Diabetes: Two Prospective Cohort Studies. Nutrients (2023).