I start to wonder if you can eat with too much variety as well. People tend to eat more when there's more variety (low-carb and potato-only diets work mostly by making you bored of eating).
The slime mold guys are currently testing the hypothesis that the potassium in potatoes is why the potato monodiet works…
The mechanism of diets isn’t understood yet - check out Kevin Hall’s metabolic ward study of low fat high carb vs. high fat low carb for some paradoxical results.
I’d be happy finding a diet that consistently works for people before understanding how.
Kevin Hall also did a fascinating study on ultra-processed vs less processed foods which found that people ate more and gained more weight on ultra-processed foods even when the two diets were identical in macronutrient composition! I would guess that the main reason dramatically different diets show similar levels of effectiveness is that all of them involve drastically limiting intake of ultra-processed foods.
