The Pros and Cons of Diet Diversity

Dwayne Johnson, while preparing for the role of Hercules, ate a “lot” of egg whites, filet mignon, chicken, fish, oatmeal, broccoli, asparagus, baked potato, cream of rice, salad, and “complex carbohydrates” all the days.

Similarly, Henry Cavill, while preparing for any of his Superman roles, would wake up to a protein shake and berries, followed a little later by a ham omelet. After working out, he had a post-workout shake. Lunch was chicken and white rice with curry sauce (for flavor). The third meal was the same, but with brown rice instead of white.

The fourth meal was four ounces of beef with sweet potato fries because he’s not a “big fan” of ordinary sweet potatoes. The last meal was a protein shake before bed.

Of course, both diets come with a big asterisk. Those diets, while limited in diversity, were temporary, simply a means to an end, the end being in this case the achievement of superhero shredding and buffitude.

One has to assume that Johnson and Cavill went back to a normal or semi-normal diet after the movies ended, at least until they got ready for their next movie. Still, you wonder, at least a little, what would be the health effects of following that kind of diet every day for long periods of time.

We’ll never know, but we’ve all known bodybuilders/athletes who ate that way for long periods of time, but let them digest for a minute as we watch someone else eat the same food every day.

Enter Donald A. Gorske, a placeholder in the Guinness Book of World Records for having eaten an average of two Big Macs a day (almost always washed down with Coca-Cola) and little else for 50 years. That’s roughly 36,000 Big Macs.

Gorske claims to have no known health problems. He is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds. As of 2011 (the last time she went to see a doctor), his total cholesterol was 156 mg/dl, well below the national average of 208 mg/dl.

Gorske has to be an anomaly, right? Otherwise, our whole world is meaningless. We’d all be like Woody Allen’s character in “Sleeper” who wakes up in a future where cigarettes and cream pies are healthy.

Yes, I’m sure Gorske is something of a unicorn, and the Hercules and Superman movie role diets, while lacking in diversity, would still yield better long-term health outcomes than the diets of the average American, despite the case of Gorske. .

But let’s compare the pros and cons of eating the same foods every day and see if the benefits of one outweigh the other.