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shminux comments on How to use human history as a nutritional prior? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The folk wisdom of "eat a bit of everything" seems to go well with humans being omnivores and with not overdosing on any particular harmful ingredient. That was before pollution and allergies were rampant, of course.
That only makes sense in cases where you have no additional data suggesting that some foods are healthier than others.
Also, if a few foods exist which exhibit chronic toxicity at low doses, but you don't know which foods those are, wouldn't it be safer to limit the total number of different foods you consume, as to limit the chance of consuming a particularly bad one by chance? While atypical, there could be cases where the toxicity curve is relatively flat, and lower doses don't really protect you. For example, an endocrine toxin that simulates a hormonal signal even at a low dose.
This would seem to require that most of the 'wisdom' being embedded in the 'everything' in question.
Good point, foods that have been historically clearly identified as toxic would have already moved into the non-food category. So this advice is effectively saying, "look only at your priors and don't consider or collect new data."
If our ancestors took this advice literally they'd have kept eating things that can obviously kill you, like digitalis.
In reality, I think the spirit of the advice is a warning not to under-estimate the importance of your priors: don't consider new data in isolation.
You have managed to extract a rather useful generalizable point from the subject!
As well as this we can assume that the advice also covers the idea of not putting all your eggs (be they epistemic or dietary) in one basket.