Anyone eat a very simple diet?

While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.  They may or may not be supplemented with in-season wild, minimally cultivated foods, or game.  I know I’d get bored with it, but I wonder how this would affect weight control. No reason to overeat when the next meal is just more of the same.  A simple staple diet may also combat “homesteaders fatigue”, which seems to be induced by running around trying to produce the food variety that we are used to in the modern world.  Thoughts?

I do wonder how simple you can get and still have the range of nutrients required for health.

Historical diet here is oats, bere barley, milk (and dairy products), kale, and fish, particularly herring. Some local roots like silverweed and pignut (before potatoes). I think it covers the basics actually surprisingly well!

Hi Nancy,

There were some studies in Great Britain during WW2. I don’t really member the specifics, but it was determined in was possible with a relatively simple  mix of foods.

About a year and a half ago, I got quite ill and had to go on a simple diet. I started out just eating bananas, homemade yogurt or kefir, honey, almonds, ham, hard-boiled or scrambled eggs, green beans, 100% pure juices and maybe one or two other items, but I can't recall. I was eating just those foods for a couple months.  After a couple months I started incorporating more foods, though all were still whole foods. Though I lost a lot of weight, I became a tiny bit deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, as I hadn't put much thought into my nutrition, just was worried about which foods would keep me cured from the horrible health issue I was having. Overall I am super glad that I cut back down to just a handful of foods, as I had never lived with a whole foods diet before. The diet, I noticed, greatly reduced inflammation that I didn't even realize I had until it was gone.  It also would make stocking a pantry a breeze as long as you did not have others in your household who were not eating that way.

John F Dean wrote:There were some studies in Great Britain during WW2. I don’t really member the specifics, but it was determined in was possible with a relatively simple  mix of foods.

Thanks for the thought - I've wondered before whether a war time ration diet, might be an interesting one to follow. I found a few interesting links:
The Guardian reports on one that looked mainly at protein (the UK imported, and still does) much meat from outside the UK. So some scientists experimented on themselves, eating just what was able to be produced in the UK:

British food production in 1938 became the basis for the experimental diet: one egg a week (a third of the pre-war consumption); a quarter of a pint of milk a day (half the pre-war consumption); a pound of meat and 4oz of fish per week, assuming trawlers would be commandeered for patrols. No butter and just 4oz of margarine. But they could eat as much potato, vegetables, and wholemeal bread as they wanted. The eight guinea pigs would follow this diet for three months.

The results were good - there were no immediate health issues the scientist felt well and able to work normally. Problems reported were that meals too longer to eat since "wholemeal bread without butter" took ages to chew, as did all the potatoes required for adequate calorie intake. Poos were 250% bigger and they had a lot of flatulence!
Apparently rationing was never quite as severe as the trial diet, but also this diet was only followed for a limited period of time, so longer term issues would be unknown. They also made extra allowances in time for pregnant women since they found issues with anaemia: from this 1942 study: 25% were deficient in protein, over 60% were deficient in Fe and vitamin A, and over 70% had severe vitamin C deficiency.
Interestingly this paper concludes that

The notion that the population was healthier than it had ever been was true but this was a relative measure, which demonstrated how poor the diet had been in pre-war times

. There was also targeted supplements of cod liver oil and vitamin fortified foods. I gather that vitamin D shortage (always in a bit short supply in Northern climes) was still an issue. From the same study:

While vitamin and mineral deficiencies are almost unknown in modern life, the rise in certain diet-related cancers, diabetes and heart disease suggest that there is much still to learn from the lessons of WW2

Nancy Reading wrote:Historical diet here is oats, bere barley, milk (and dairy products), kale, and fish, particularly herring. Some local roots like silverweed and pignut (before potatoes). I think it covers the basics actually surprisingly well!

I think this is really interesting in context of our local foraging experiment last year: https://permies.com/t/225453/Neolithic-menus

From what I know of UK foraging & growing, plus nutrition, if you were starting from a rich foraging situation & adding some gardening, you'd want to start by adding
1) a couple of locally suitable bulk carbohydrate crops e.g. cereals or storage tubers;
2) a couple of protein crops e.g. peas & beans; &
3) a couple of crops for your essential fats e.g. oil seeds.

That would exchange labour for more reliable supplies of bulk macronutrients including fibre, plus sources of some key micronutrients such as Omega 3 & 6 fatty acids, B complex vitamins if you're growing cereals (B12 from accidentally eating insects with the crop ..!!), some minerals from the legumes etc. The rest of your food, you still forage.

You could still in principle be living nomadically, with movement patterns designed to bring you to a given garden at planting & harvest times, if you have sufficiently hardy crops.  I believe there are numerous examples of surviving Indigenous foodway knowledge that are in this kind of pattern.

As for me, last Spring, I had to adopt a very simple diet as I'd been given COVID-19 in Sep 2022 & I now have Long COVID-19. The GP found my potassium was dangerously high, putting me at risk of heart attack.

You don't want to be on a simple refined diet for long, but you can get essential Omega 3 fats from rapeseed oil, some essential amino acids from refined wheat flour rounded out by a little pea flour. Luckily, after gaining 3 stone, my simple diet supported me to bring my potassium back into normal range within four months.

Given my age, I'm finding upping my consumption of homegrown peas & beans (Carlin 'maple' peas, maincrop green peas for drying as well as a vegetable, fava  beans likewise) supplemented with imported pulses, and de-emphasizing 'pale carbohydrates' for lower wholegrain bread intake (I'm growing Vitanoire purple mottled potatoes, not white body ones, for example), is helping my health. Perennial kale too!

Hi Nancy,

You jogged my memory a bit more. If my memory is correct there was a effort to put more cabbage in the diet. I suspect this was to address the Vitamin C issue.

This also adds some clarity to a WW2 story of my mother’s .  She told me how people would leave nails in a bucket of water and, after several days, drink the water.

Japanese folks have lived for centuries into old age off of staples like millet during times of war.

Part of me thinks simplicity like rice and fish combined with fermentation (pickles, soy sauce) is definitely a suitable lifelong combination.

Not me. I aim to eat as diverse a diet as I can , along with very little commercial foods. I’m not looking for dietary deficiencies, but rather a robust health. I’m in my 70s, closer to 80 now. I still farm 35 hours a week.  So…….I eat as diverse a diet as I can.

I like variety and wouldn’t limit myself like that. But growing up 90% of our dinners were beef, potatoes, green beans or corn, and milk. We had other foods for other meals though, and occasionally had something else for dinner.

I definitely eat a very simple diet and have for a long time due to severe fructan intolerance. As long as i keep to a simple diet, i feel great and my health is excellent. I use a nutrition tracker to confirm i am getting full nutrition. Currently, my diet is fermented beans and fermented millet/sorghum, with ghee. Previously i have also done a carnivore diet, based on locally raised mutton, beef, or wild venison including organ meats, and fatty fish (mackerel, saury). Worked great too. I do intermittent fasting for around 20 hours daily, so that helps me look forward ro my meals!

We have been trying to greatly simplify our diet. I may not be the person to serve as an example, as I truly love a variety of foods and there are only a few foods in the world I wouldn't at least consider trying. Our diet is definitely far from simple. With that being said, here are some thoughts:

1. I've been trying to switch to more homegrown staple foods (recommend Carol Deppe's books!) - grain corn (polenta and cornbread), winter squash, potatoes, eggs, and beans. One could probably eat potatoes every day cooked in different ways. I would also argue that tomato is a staple.

2. I still buy a few staples, such as rice. Only now instead of 4 varieties of rice, I use one. The risotto may not be authentic, but still very good. I still buy pasta, also only sticking to 2 shapes (one short and one long). I made changes to many recipes such as tabouleh (to avoid buying bulgur or any other grains I uses rarely).

3. We try to limit foods to local ones. We are still eating bananas and drinking coffee I can probably survive without bananas once/if our fruit trees really get going. We no longer eat tropical fruits.

4. I am working on updating family recipes into flexible "formulas". For instance, you can use the same general recipe for majority of greens you grow and forage (mustard greens, kale, collards, nettles, sochan, radish tops) - wilt in a little olive oil with thinly sliced garlic and add a vinegar of choice and salt once almost done; don't overcook. You can make the same general recipe (such as curry) and use what you have.

5. I have been working on downsizing the number of spices I use. I try to primarily use spices I can grow myself (coriander, chili flakes, mustard, oregano, rosemary, saffron, thyme, sage, sesame, turmeric, ginger) so that I only have to purchase peppercorns, salt, nutmeg, and cumin.

6. Eating seasonally is simple in a way, but adds variety and excitement. That way, you can gorge on whatever is in season, get tired of it, and move on to the next thing.

7. I can see how boredom could lead to weight loss to a degree. I am not sure if weight control has more to do with lack of processed foods and calorie expenditure.

8. I absolutely agree that trying to grow everything or even shopping and cooking from scratch can lead to exhaustion and stress. Off topic, but I have also simplified any healthy eating rules to essentially the following: no liquid calories, fewer meals per day/limit snacking, limit processed and fried foods, limit sugars unless there is a fruit around it.

A guy who writes things I used to keep up with challenged himself some years ago to only eat bland, simple food for a month (boiled potatoes, seitan, plain boiled veg, although he did have some cheats).
He did it as a challenge, not as a weight loss strategy or medical treatment.
It was hard, apparently. Food variety is a luxury that we seem to enjoy very much. I know I personally like as diverse a diet as possible.
https://web.bookstruck.in/book/chapter/23965

I think, if there is a high quality meat (and organs) involved, the rest can be quite simple. Growing it also may be simpler than growing veggies, most of which are high maintenance crops.

Gray Henon wrote:While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.

I find this hard to believe. Maybe in very harsh environments, but considering the indigenous knowledge of various plants and animals, which surpasses the knowledge of average "civilized" people, I think they would eat more diverse foods than "us". When a friend of mine moved to the countryside years ago, she said that if she wants to know the name of any roadside plant, she just needs to ask a local child.

My simplification is more in the way I cook it. Often I don't have the time to serve something fancy so it's just broth, in which I throw whatever grew in my garden ;) plus ingredients I buy from local farmers.

This is a great question to ponder. There's so much fuss involved with preparing food.
Personally, I'd so much rather be out working in my garden than in the kitchen. So I try to keep it simple. Smoothies, huge salads, steamed potatoes. That's the bulk of my diet in the Summer.

I'm very inspired by what Anastasia says in the Ringing Cedars of Russia - "to eat as one breathes".

Food is not meant to be a chore that distracts us from more important pursuits such as communing with God through nature and creating beauty on the earth. I'm not saying cooking is bad overall, just the main point is that we have a higher purpose here and all the mundane tasks add up to distracting us from it.
To eat as one breathes one would need an extremely diverse and abundant garden. And one would be led intuitively to which foods they were drawn to that are the exact nutrition they need at the exact time. Like walking through your garden and picking some berries or herbs to nibble as you go. Food is the freshest within the first minutes after picking then rapidly declines in nutritional value so you get the most eating it in this manner. And there's a lot more to it than just vitamins.

While I wouldn’t say that my diet is super simple, it is restricted by multiple allergies (a low histamine diet) and what’s available on our homestead. This means that while I do preserve food we produce, I mostly eat what’s in season. My proteins are limited to eggs, poultry and rabbit meat, which we produce. We can and due grow produce all year round, due to our climate. I grow sorghum as the only grain I consume. We eat whatever fruits and berries we have available during the year, tubers like sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes, cassava and arrowroot’s. Our greens changes. During the cold season we eat a lot of lettuce, collards and spinach.
I think this is also how earlier humans fed themselves. Like our diet, their diet changed with the seasons. Eating what’s available also makes you appreciate your ingredients more. Right now, we don’t have any fruits available fresh, so we stick to what was preserved, until we can get citrus again after new years.
This is actually a yearly problem, but I am planting two sapote trees, that will hopefully bridge that gab. For vitamin c we use rosehips, hibiscus and black currants, which we do have available right now. We also have beans, collards and spinach available and eggs from our chickens. I just harvested sorghum, which I mainly use for porridge. We also have a lot of herbs available. In a few months, we will get broccoli, cauliflowers, lettuce and radishes.
Anyway, while restricted to low histamine and seasonal food, it’s a diet richer in nutrients, since it’s picked fresh from the garden.

I would have to agree with some comments that we try to eat as diversely as we can for the sake of both nutrition and enjoyment. However, we have simplified our diet in that I barely use cookbooks or make complicated dishes with strictly required ingredients. Eggs from our ducks, veggies and berries from the garden, homemade sourdough, some peanuts we buy raw and roast ourselves, etc.  For meal prep I start by looking in the fridge and freezer: what needs to be eaten? What would go well together? Does the dish have an official name? Nah, but I can make one up.

We also tend to eat seasonally. In the summer we eat a lot of salads although that word is used loosely and might not contain lettuce. Stuff mixed and dressed, eaten cold or room temp, that's a salad. In the winter I make more soup but again, whatever veg fresh or frozen is available, some lentils, plenty of herbs. Cuddle with the bowl and listen to the wind outside. Delicious.

I do buy chocolate, cheese, hemp milk, raw cow's milk when our daughter's cow is giving it. Also olive oil and coconut oil, tea and coffee. And my husband would say "Don't forget the tortilla chips." A food group in itself for him.

For several years I have been experimenting with growing beans for drying and some kind of grain. Successes have been black beans and grain sorghum: for hot cereal, not syrup.

Going on three years ago, my handicapped daughter and I had to make some drastic changes to our diet for health reasons. Our diet -- as long as we stay on it (and we almost always regret it when we don't stay on it) -- is almost entirely meat, to include poultry and fish. We do seem to be able to eat fermented dairy products (in reasonable amounts), and a few fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut and pickles. So far, it seems like blueberries and watermelon, in small quantities once in a while, don't do any harm. So that's essentially it. We have a tight budget, so I don't buy steak (steak isn't safe for my daughter, anyway, because she chokes easily). I get the cheapest ground beef, bulk packages of chicken legs, the cheapest pork roasts, a few cans of fish, bacon, and once in a while a bag of frozen shrimp. Neither of us tolerates eggs - they really bring on her autism symptoms. I was surprised to find that our food bill actually stayed the same or went down, though if you went into it buying steak for your red meat, that probably wouldn't be the case!

I still keep trying out various things that we'd like to be able to add back into our diets, but very few have worked. So, simple diet it is for us, and it's really not been the hardship that I expected. No, we don't need carbs (carbohydrates are NOT an essential nutrient). An all-meat diet is quite nutritionally complete; vegetables are not only not necessary, all of them contain substances which are not good for human health, something we've been made extremely aware of over the last few years as we've experimented with various foods. I could give you a long list of health problems that have gone away as a result of cutting almost all plant foods out of our diets - and come back  when we try to add them back in. I was NOT expecting that. My expectation when I started was just to get inflammation under control and reduce the muscle pain I was experiencing (it worked). All these other things resolving was a total surprise, but a welcome one, for sure.

Sometimes people will say, "Fine, but the whole world can't eat that way." I did a little research, and some back-of-the-envelope figuring, and it looks like, yes, the entire world *could* eat a more-or-less carnivore diet if they wanted to. That figuring just involved the currently-arable land already in use, and didn't include a lot of land that is really marginal for growing crops but could easily be used for raising livestock, or the huge amounts of forest which would make excellent silvopasture. Nor did my figures take fish and shellfish into account at all, or small critters such as rabbits and quail which are primarily raised in cages.  So, there is that, for what it's worth.

Been doing OMAD for a few years now and avoiding seed oils, added sugar, maltodextrin, starches, gluten etc... Did keto for a while but it's not really compatible with OMAD. I don't like eating during the day at all... I don't even consider my diet "fasting", as medium sized mammals really only need 1 meal a day.

I think of the body as a microcosm within Nature, and the plants in the landscape as a macrocosm of what we are meant to eat. Every plant is medicine to the land and medicine to the body, and I have learned to trust more and more that what Nature chooses to grow is often good for us.

That doesn’t seem to lend to a simple diet, as there is so much variety of food around. But it seems to lend to an ecologically and nutritionally balanced one. So I eat whatever wild and local foods are around, and dairy, olive oil and seeds for calories—at least cooking for myself (with others it’s a slightly different story). I mostly cook whatever wild foods are around and supplement with the cultivated if necessary. And eat fruit like peaches and apples as caloric staples in season, taking a cautious hint from the bears (but not quite as voraciously!)

One story illustrates this better. I had tried to get grains to grow for many years and someone had chopped them down each year while they were growing, such that I never got a harvest. Then last winter I became sick and realized grains made me feel worse, for days after. I had a dream to the effect that I didn’t need grains, and immediately made the connection to the rabbit’s gnawing and stopped eating them (much to the horror and chagrin of people around me), but I began feeling better emotionally and physically. It is a bit of a mystical thing, but I believe the earth is much more intelligent than we are and we could do well to trust her instead of trying to control and replace. Our land is not very inclined towards producing grains, but rather to nuts, mushrooms, greens, and root vegetables. These grow without any human effort, naturally and abundantly, and they are healthy and nutritionally rich.

I think that my ancestors back thousands of years ago probably ate lots of acorns and nettles as staple foods and those are two foods that I love and find to be very nourishing for me. I could imagine eating only those, and there was a famous Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, Milarepa, who was said to have eaten only nettles (which I could believe).

I, too, have really made an effort to find the most nutritious food that does not affect my body in negative ways.  I avoid white foods like flour, sugar, rice, potatoes, because I realized that they aggravated inflammation and raised my blood sugar.  I try to eat lower carb foods, but I do eat a fair amount of fruit, finding that the fiber and water it contains helps to balance it out.  I don't juice friut, but eat it whole.  I do eat protein, but it's a food group that I struggle with.  I find it hard to balance out all that I read about as far as health and nutrition.  For example, charring food adds in carcinogens, so when frying up a hamburger, for example, I try to cook it low and slow.  If cooking chicken breast, I'll slice it lengthwise, sometimes into fourths. Toward the end, I'll add in water, to both help it clean the pan, but also steam the poultry so that it's cooked through and it makes a nice seasoned broth. I love vegetables and will eat almost anything, but usually stick to traditional choices here.  I grow only things that pay or that grow well here.  Lots of string beans, cukes, zucchini, kale and winter squash.  I even grow basil like a crop and process it through the season, which is lovely come February and I'm still reaping the benefits! I don't grow broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions...too fiddly or unsuccessful, although I will buy them in the grocery store, along with grains and dried beans.

Because I need to be cautious with high glycemic foods, I avoid corn, peas, lima beans and the like, but I do have things like lentils, black beans, etc. When I do have the legumes, I add lots of vegetables, broth, and things to stretch the recipe.  I love leftovers.  Simplicity wins out over boredom every time.  I've actually gotten more experimental with adding more herbs and spices after really learning about their medicinal qualities.  (Turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, etc.)  I do a fair amount of foraging for medicinal plants, and allow most to grow here on the property: plantain, chickweed, chamomile, mint, dandelion and so on.)  I have also planted many plants for their medicinal benefits: mushrooms, elderberry, hawthorn to name a few.  I harvest Turkey Tail off of stumps out back and make tinctures with it, and I grow wine cap mushrooms which I freeze dry or freeze after sauteing out most of the water as a space-saving  measure.

I grow lots of fruit.  Maybe 50 kinds?   I have 40 blueberries (just one of the 50), for example, and the research coming out about them and many of the fruit I grow is very positive.  I'd planted a medlar because its size and fruiting time and easy care seemed like a good idea.  Come to find out, it is really being explored as something to treat diseases like cancer and diabetes.  I have a huge row of asparagus (@150') and it has inulin which is excellent for health.  I've branched out into canning, fermenting and dehydrating to extend the harvest.  I practice organic gardening, and keep the leaves and all debris on the property to build up the soil, which I think adds to the nutrient value and quality of the soil.  I have a great variety of foods growing here that will span from May through December for fresh eating. When canning, I look for recipes that have little or no added sugar.  If there is some sugar, I won't drink the juice and I'll use the least amount possible to retain the fruit flavor. I canned about 30 quarts of peaches and used the ultra light sugar amount. I made peach salsa with no sugar and peach mustard which called for a small amount of maple syrup and I bottle of ale.

I've also learned to make wine, which does have a lot of sugar, but the yeast eats it, so I'm thinking it's not too bad, especially if had in moderation.  Right now, I have some blueberry and some peach wine fermenting.  I have dandelion, rhubarb and strawberry wine bottled and waiting! I might have one glass once in a week or two, so I think that's okay.  Mostly, my food choices are around health benefit.  I no longer buy ultra-processed food or deli meats.  I check the ingredient labels for those things that require a label, but more and more I'm trying to live off of what I grow here on my one acre.  My next leap will be to get grass-fed meat vs. the cheapest thing at the grocery store...although, in these times, it just doesn't seem feasible.  

Cost is definitely a factor in what I eat as well.  I eat a lot of chicken!  I go to Costco and buy milk and then make my own yogurt which saves a fair amount.  There is a chicken farm down the road where I get my eggs quite inexpensively.  At one point, I thought about raising chickens, but I'm 65, and don't really want to invest hundreds into getting a coop; nor do I want to be hauling buckets of water in the winter time, etc. Cost needs to factor in labor, and I'm stretched pretty thin with all that I already have going on.  Some down time is invaluable, too! That's when I can do my other hobbies!

What is a simple diet?

I eat a meat and vegetables.  Is that simple?

Broccoli and cauliflower, with some mixed vegetables sometimes.

Meat is something that cooks in the air fryer for about 15 minutes.  It has been a hot summer And it is still hot ...

For many years I've tweaked with my diet to reach the best compromise between sustainability, self-sufficiency, economy, and energy footprint. What it has led to most of the time is a diet relying on root crops (white and sweet potatoes, specifically) as the staple calorie source. In multiple climates that I've lived in, they almost overlap in season in terms of being available to eat from storage. Right now in the last few months I've succeeded in closing that gap by grating and drying the excess, which I can then rehydrate and use during any gap in fresh availability.  In previous years I've often grown or bought small amounts of grain or other starch sources, or else kindly dumpsters have subsidized with breads etc.  To these things then are added veggies and fruits depending on what's available...here again every climate and landscape offers several that grow easily...I'm long past the time of spending large amounts of effort trying to grow something persnickety....just buy it and let it be a special treat!  Protein sources....that's one thing that requires some stability and system maturity.  Laying hens are probably the first thing to add, except in situations where harvesting wild protein by hunting, fishing, or trapping is an option.  Having enough land to add small ruminants like sheep or goats is a game changer and a quick way to ratchet protein toward self-sufficiency. Vegetable protein sources, like legumes, are a lot of work.  You need space to grow them, and they take processing....which often seems out of balance with commodity purchased legumes that are never touched by human hands from seeding to market.  I did it a few years with fava beans....will probably try soybeans now that I live in soy country.  

Gray Henon wrote:While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.  They may or may not be supplemented with in-season wild, minimally cultivated foods, or game.  I know I’d get bored with it, but I wonder how this would affect weight control. No reason to overeat when the next meal is just more of the same.  A simple staple diet may also combat “homesteaders fatigue”, which seems to be induced by running around trying to produce the food variety that we are used to in the modern world.  Thoughts?"

I think the OP's focus on potential weight control benefits is likely misguided.  I suspect the greater weight control benefit for indigenous peoples comes from a more physically active, less sedentary lifestyle, not from their available foods.  Most staple foods are starchy, so the more reliant one is on staples, the more naturally inclined to weight gain one's diet would be, I should think.

But producing the majority of your own food without technological assistance requires substantial physical exertion.  Actually, it requires substantial exertion even with technological assistance!  As does simply getting around without technological assistance; i.e. walking everywhere all the time.  I suspect this is the most relevant factor for health.

My father is a Type II Diabetic.  Last winter, he and I took a week-long vacation to the Florida Keys that included a lot of nature- and bird-watching as well as tourism.  We spent a lot of time hiking around town and through the bush.  He stopped taking his normal diabetes medications entirely that week, based on his blood sugar readings.  It turns out the best management of Type II Diabetes is measured in steps per day.  Our diet during the week was not significantly different than at any other time.  Only his level of aerobic exercise had changed.

As to the larger question, I am sure with adequate vigilance for specific micronutrient deficiencies, one could make a simplified diet work for a very long time.  My immediate response: why should one try?  Surely a diverse diet is best for optimal health.  The human body is a natural machine.  As permaculturalists, we appreciate more than most how vital diversity is to the optimal functioning of any natural system.

A diverse diet is good for optimal mental health as well.  I love to cook, because I love to eat.  I recognize that some people don't have the same positive and stimulating relationship to food that I do, even if I don't understand them.  Still, most people would simply become bored by a simple diet, as the OP wrote.

As to "homesteaders fatigue," I'm not familiar with that phrase.  Certainly, homesteading is a LOT of work.  I suppose focusing production on a few staple crops would simplify and thus reduce the workload a bit.  I would think livestock should be one of those staple crops.  Animals take a lot of attention, but they are effective at concentrating a wide and diverse number of system elements - many different plants and other animals - into just a couple of yields.

All of this will vary based on one's homesteading goals and circumstances.  For example, I aim to be a "modern homesteader," not a "survivalist."  I don't need to produce 100% of the calories, 100% of the nutrition, or 100% of the variety in my diet.  I still enjoy convenient and affordable access to the global economy, particularly to the continental food distribution network.  In fact, the more money I save growing a portion of my own food, the more remains to spend on specialty items - exotic, out-of-season, or specially processed foods - to enhance my menu.  I have no desire to abstain from such items.  If I lived remotely, or if I were choosing to prep for a future collapse scenario, I might think differently.  With my medical limitations, in any type of major collapse I'm likely doomed, so I don't bother planning for extreme eventualities.

So long as I'm content to plug in to the larger system, and so long as that system remains available to me, this actually has the opposite effect on my homesteading plans than what I think the OP implied by mentioning "homesteaders fatigue."  I am LESS inclined to dedicate space to staple crops.  I give them some space, but I focus more on low-calorie crops, including lots of herbs, veggies, and berries.  Why?  Because I can readily get my staples from the larger system.  Bread, pasta, potatoes, dry beans, even bulk onions, etc., are reliably and affordably available at the store in just as good a quality as I could grow.  Whereas high quality fresh herbs, veggies, and berries at the store are expensive!

I eat a raw vegan diet that is as simple as it gets in terms of food groups. I consume a lot of fruits, a good amount of vegetables, and a small amount of nuts and seeds. Sometimes I'll have a more intricate meal like a salad bowl with a homemade dressing, other times my meals can be as simple as consuming one fruit until I reach satiety.

Eating a simple diet is very important for maintaining good health. Our bodies digest whole foods much better than processed foods with a paragraph-long ingredient list. Digestion is the most metabolically expensive process our bodies undergo, so the less energy we expend on digestion, the more we have for other important functions like growth and repair.

Zach Moreau wrote:I eat a raw vegan diet...  Eating a simple diet is very important for maintaining good health. Our bodies digest whole foods much better than processed foods with a paragraph-long ingredient list.

A good point about whole foods vs highly processed foods, but I don't believe you are using the phrase "simple diet" the same way as the OP intended.

Zach Moreau wrote:Digestion is the most metabolically expensive process our bodies undergo, so the less energy we expend on digestion, the more we have for other important functions like growth and repair.

I am not following your logic here.  Yes, digestion is metabolically expensive.  That is why we cook food.  So, why do you follow a raw diet if you're concerned with metabolic efficiency?

Cooking many foods improves their taste and texture in the opinions of most people, and it can make some difficult-to-eat foods - the kinds you have to chew for five minutes just to eat them raw - more easily palatable.  But the primary benefit of cooking food is to increase energy available to the body.  This has always been the primary benefit, whether primitive humans first adopting the habit of cooking consciously realized it or not.

Here is an illustrative example using numbers I just made up: a beef steak contains 1000 calories of energy.  But the body must dedicate 500 calories in order to digest it - all of those proteins are hard to break down.  By breaking down its constituent molecules a little bit in advance with heat, we reduce the caloric value of a cooked steak to 900 calories, but the body now only requires 300 calories to digest it.  Thus, the net value in energy available to the metabolism is INCREASED by cooking the steak, from 500 calories to 600.

Cooking many foods improves their taste and texture in the opinions of most people, and it can make some difficult-to-eat foods - the kinds you have to chew for five minutes just to eat them raw - more easily palatable.  But the primary benefit of cooking food is to increase energy available to the body.  This has always been the primary benefit, whether primitive humans first adopting the habit of cooking consciously realized it or not.

In your own words, you are describing foods that are not "easily palatable" in their raw state. This is a clue that they are not the ideal foods for humans. Every animal on Earth eats a raw diet and humans aren't designed any differently. The foods that are most palatable to us in their raw state, mainly fruits, some vegetables, and nuts/seeds, are the foods that human bodies are designed to digest and assimilate.

Certainly, we can survive on many other foods, we have been doing so for millennia. As humans moved away from the tropics and into harsher climates, cooking became very helpful. No one wants to chew on raw beef for five minutes. It's neither efficient nor tasty. That said, surviving is not the same as thriving

Zach Moreau wrote:In your own words, you are describing foods that are not "easily palatable" in their raw state. This is a clue that they are not the ideal foods for humans.

An intriguing point!

When I was in college my housemate, an electrical engineer, relied heavily on his "vulcan nature" and decided it would be so much more logical and would save so much time to simply eat one food, preferably something minimal prep. This was, of course, before the tech people were reviving soylent green-- I don't know who their main shareholders are but I'd not be surprised to see him there.
In any case, for the entire 3 years I knew him he ate peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly. We occasionally would all go out and he'd eat normal college student food, and he didn't pass up a beer or three, but otherwise it was PBJ. Seemed to do him good, even. Go figure!

Tereza Okava wrote:When I was in college my housemate, an electrical engineer, relied heavily on his "vulcan nature" and decided it would be so much more logical and would save so much time to simply eat one food, preferably something minimal prep. This was, of course, before the tech people were reviving soylent green-- I don't know who their main shareholders are but I'd not be surprised to see him there.
In any case, for the entire 3 years I knew him he ate peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly. We occasionally would all go out and he'd eat normal college student food, and he didn't pass up a beer or three, but otherwise it was PBJ. Seemed to do him good, even. Go figure!

Unfortunately, 3 years is not an adequate timeframe for a truly revealing experiment in chronic malnutrition.  And it sounds like his diet was not even as nutritionally lacking as it might have been.  Did he drink milk with his PB&J?  A classic combo, after all, and milk goes a long way to rectifying any deficiencies.  Even just using whole grain bread and occasionally varying the type of fruit jam would go a long way towards making this a complete diet.

Provided it is given enough calories, the human body can synthesize many of the compounds it needs to continue operating, even on a nutritionally limited diet.  People living at a subsistence level in many different environments and cultures and historical periods maintained themselves on a similarly limited and unvarying diet: a handful of staples with only the rarest of variety added.

That does not mean such a diet provides optimal nutrition for optimal health.  You can survive like that without developing acute deficiencies.  You can even thrive like that, for a time.  But given a long enough window of observation, detrimental impacts of such a limited diet will tell.

As I read about the raw diet, it reminded me of watching a podcast by a doctor who deals exclusively with "Food as Medicine" (Dr. William Li who has written a few books on the topic, is a practicing doctor and researcher in his field) Anyway, I remember him talking about how some foods in some forms affect its nutritional value, like broccoli sprouts being much more powerful than broccoli and how tomatoes are more nutritious when cooked.  I just did a quick search and this article popped up in case anyone is interested.  Personally, I like both raw and cooked, so this is more about just getting more information out there.
https://www.denverhealthmedicalplan.org/blog/3-vegetables-are-healthier-when-cooked
https://www.hri.org.au/health/your-health/nutrition/nine-vegetables-that-are-healthier-for-you-when-cooked
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cooking-nutrient-content#tips

Out of desperation after 4 years of debilitating pain, I went full carnivore - meat, bacon, butter, eggs, salt and milk. Within three days my pain disappeared. 30 Days into carnivore, I started adding avocado, cucumber and zucchini.  I felt fantastic. I was so happy that I discovered a way of eating that worked for me, and I am able to source a good amount of what we eat from our homestead. That's the point, right?  

Well, the holidays came and mama likes her stuffing, potatoes and gravy!  I need to go back full carnivore. It's cheap, I feel FANTASTIC on it and it is SO easy.  There is very little food waste at all because I don't have to buy a bunch of weird ingredients to make full meals.  Oh, that's another thing - I was eating one meal a day!  I was so full and I wasn't hungry.  If I wanted a snack, I would eat bacon or pork rinds.

Easy. Cheap. Ability to provide 90% of what we ate from what we already produce. Effective.  It is perfect for me.

Em Nichols wrote:Out of desperation after 4 years of debilitating pain, I went full carnivore - meat, bacon, butter, eggs, salt and milk. Within three days my pain disappeared. 30 Days into carnivore, I started adding avocado, cucumber and zucchini.  I felt fantastic. I was so happy that I discovered a way of eating that worked for me, and I am able to source a good amount of what we eat from our homestead. That's the point, right?  

Well, the holidays came and mama likes her stuffing, potatoes and gravy!  I need to go back full carnivore. It's cheap, I feel FANTASTIC on it and it is SO easy.  There is very little food waste at all because I don't have to buy a bunch of weird ingredients to make full meals.  Oh, that's another thing - I was eating one meal a day!  I was so full and I wasn't hungry.  If I wanted a snack, I would eat bacon or pork rinds.

Easy. Cheap. Ability to provide 90% of what we ate from what we already produce. Effective.  It is perfect for me.

Great to hear that this diet works for you.  It definitely qualifies as a "simple diet," as you've eliminated the majority of common foodstuffs.  I have a friend for whom a similar diet has also worked well.  I don't feel the need to experiment with it myself, as I already feel great as a health-focused but fairly conventional omnivore.  I assume you eat seafood as well?

I must say, though, that it seems hard to imagine the full carnivore diet as inexpensive for those who don't raise their own animals.  Meat from the store is expensive, though probably even less so than it would be in a fair, unsubsidized market.

Yes, I do eat seafood.  Salmon and shrimp, although my husband doesn't like either of them because we know they aren't wild raised or caught.  As homesteaders, we have to work with what we have.  

We buy our steaks from a local butcher for about $15/pound.   My husband will only eat filet mignon, even though I sneak in rib eyes and sirloin steaks when he isn't paying attention.  We eat about 1 lb per day of steak/meat/beef.  Plus the butter, milk/cream, chicken, seafood and bacon.  We could spend $100 per day eating out every single day and we've cut our food bill by over half when we eat carnivore.  

I am learning to make and eat from just whole foods that could be growing, that I'll be doing, making the simple things I can make from it all. I hope to have others with me who are into growing those things and doing the same, there will need to be the good land for this, and willingness to live this primitive way with independence from civilization I am seeing is needed.

My meals are few but so tasty