Inflammation free food

[Derek Goffin]

A few months ago Huzefa found a reference on the internet to a book about inflammation free food. I ordered the book and promised to report back when I had " digested" it.
The book is based on the permise that a whole series of foods cause cellular inflammation which in turn exacerbates degenerative diseases such as arthritis, heart attacks, diabetes, even cancer.
It says low glycemic index, the right balance of omega3 oils to omega6,and a series of other less widespread effects are anti inflammatory. I think what they say is good is probably good although personally I am not convinced that they had evidence to show how they had weighted the different good and bad factors.
The result is a long but not comprehensive list of foods with an inflammation index number attached.
To give you a flavour fish is generally very good, nuts are good,vegetables are good, olive, fish and rapeseed oil are good Some mostly lean meat is marginal,seeds and cereals are marginally negative. Fruit is marginally negative,most oils not mentioned above are negative, sweet things and junk food are very negative.
Potatoes are like cereals not vegetables, walnuts and pine nuts are like seeds not nuts.
You are supposed to balance the positive and negative components of your diet to end up slightly positive, not just eat restricted anti-inflammatory foods. So although fruit is mildly negative because of its glycemic index you are still supposed to eat it.
I have moved my day to day diet in the right direction according to the book.
My lightweight dehydrated dense calorie, chocolate rich trekking diet stayed negative and inflammatory.
I have just started to experiment with homemade flapjack: oats, rapeseed oil, brazil nuts, raisins, ginger and lemon baked and coated in chocolate to make it keep longer. This concoction would be inflammation neutral, 5.5 calories per gram, (as calorie dense as chocolate.)
The other problem to solve is how to take fish trekking without the cans.

[Anonymous]

Derek,
You might consider experimenting with dried fish. Go to an East Asian grocery-they will have sealed packages of dried fish and squid, often times seasoned with chili, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, etc. Pretty tasty, IMO. You can eat it out of the package or reconstitute it in soups or stews. Another option is smoked/kippered fish, again in plastic or foil packets. Smoked salmon is hard ot beat.

[Brett Tucker]

A few years ago there was a nutritional fad called The Zone Diet, as popularized by MD/author Barry Sears. According to the Zone Diet, every food you ate, and even the combinations of foods eaten, either resulted in beneficial hormonal responses or negative ones. In order to attain optimum health, avoid premature aging, etc., the Zone Diet required that you do everything right, eat nothing counter to the formula, and even offered in-depth meal plans, basically telling you exactly what to eat. Lots of foods were out, some of them rather surprisingly, and never mind the lack of scientific proof to support any of it.

In the case of inflammation-free food, I think we have another example of an author starting with an interesting premise, and then selectively finding or inventing the evidence to support it. The baseline arguments may even appear sound, and there IS a growing body of scientific evidence to supports the theory that inflammation is a root cause of many diseases, and even that diet has a significant role to play. But I think we need to be wary of the sensational tactics some of these "doctors" turned best-selling authors are using in order to get the attention they do. For starters, the "fruit is sorta bad" argument should jump right out at you. That just doesn't sit right, and anyone who tries to make it some nutritional law is being disingenuous.

Quantifying foods as either good or bad, positive or negative, assigning numbers, calculating every bite, is not a healthy way of thinking about food. Better to take a broad view of the issue of inflammation, learn the latest scientific thinking, see what various nutrition experts have to say about various types of food, and then draw your own conclusions. No one has all the answers, nor is there one ultimate answer that applies to everyone. The black and white point of view sells books, but it rarely educates.

[John S.]

Most every diet book is a ripoff, as Brett alludes to. There will be a newly named diet every year. An inflammtion index for foods is junk science. See if the author has a psychology degree.

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