No, it's not a distrust of the EEPROM.update function no.
It was an idea that came to me in a small project.
If I tried to write the value and found that it was the same, I wouldn't need to read it to compare with the current value.
But that is exactly what .update() does. So, you can either let the library do it, or you can do it, but if you bother to read and compare, you might as well just .write() if they are not the same or else the library will repeat everything you have done.