I remember reading something somewhere about how you could eat potatoes every day and the only things you would have to make up for are calcium and iron. I don’t know if this is true, but this is the kind of thing I’m looking for. eg if you could only eat 5~ things forever, what would those have to be?
not planning this as a diet, just curious
whole soybeans - protein, essential fats (omega 3 and 6), fiber, iron, zinc, calcium, potassium, magnesium, folic acid, phosphorus, choline, and a bunch of other vitamins and trace minerals
eggs or fatty fish - b12, protein, choline, and other vitamins and minerals. a little bit of powdered egg shells can provide all the calcium, and so can whole small fish eaten with bones.
a dark leafy green (spinach/kale/others) - vit a, c, k, iron, folic acid, potassium and a bunch of other things
a nut or seed (almond/peanut/walnuts/sunflower seeds/pepitas/chia/flax/others) - vit E, fats (omega 3 and/or 6), protein, fiber, and many other vitamins and minerals
table salt - sodium and chlorine
if you’re aiming for 2000 calories, you should eat about 200g uncooked soybeans (600g cooked, about 900-1000 calories), 4 ounces of eggs/fish (100-200 calories), a huge portion of greens (50-200 calories), and 2-4 ounces of nut/seed (300-600 calories).
but nutrition isn’t just about essential nutrients. foods have a whole host of benefits to offer like energy, phytochemicals, prebiotics, probiotics, mental satisfaction, social bonding, etc. soybeans, for example, are insanely nutritious but taste awful, like cardboard paste. other legumes, which are not as nutritious as soybeans (but still excellent), taste much better. eat as diverse as you possibly can.
First first I feel nutrition science has not advanced enough to be able to truly answer the question.
Everybody’s body is different so there’s a different need for different foods so that can’t be a formulaic 5 or 10 foods for everyone.
However there are picky eaters even as adults who basically eat the same food everyday with not too much variety. With not too much variation. I’m not sure any study has been done on their longitivity.
In a sense don’t we all eat basically five or six foods over and over again? I’m thinking more of vegetables. There’s only so many veggies in the main grocery aisle and yet we know especially those of us who have access to Farmers market that there’s actually an equal number or more of vegetables that rarely make it to grocery stores.
People are different. I believe it is so bad that the amount one person might need would be exorbitant for another for some nutrients. Trivially, we could discuss pernicious anemia. But B12 isn’t going to hurt you, I guess.
A key thing to realize is that we aren’t filters for nutrients; we are more like shepherds tending to a flock. If you wipe out our gut colony, we don’t fare well. Only in the right environment will nutrients form an organized march across the gut wall. It varies, and could never be made to not. There are epigenetic concerns, and allergies, and questions about pro/pre-biotic factors in all foods… individual variations in enzyme production.. I could go on..