How to Kickstart an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
While the basis of most chronic diseases is inflammation, many of these illnesses are preventable and reversible — and one of the simplest ways to protect ourselves from the get-go is by being conscious of our eating habits and developing an anti-inflammatory diet.
At its core, inflammation is the process the body uses to protect itself. It’s natural and essential, and helps fight both big and small-scale infections, like a simple cut or a battle with pneumonia. That process is categorized as acute inflammation, and it’s natural. We want our body to be able to fight anything that causes harm.
What we want to avoid is chronic inflammation, which develops when other foreign material enters the body. An important and natural way to fight chronic inflammation is by lessening our consumption of toxins like refined and highly processed foods. Because the body isn’t set up to process those foods, it recognizes them as irregular, potentially causing us to fall victim to diseases like diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and even some forms of cancer.
How Food Can Fight Inflammation
While there are medicines that exist to help resist inflammation, the most effective way is to naturally help your body is by switching to an anti-inflammatory diet. By deliberately incorporating foods that contribute to preventing inflammation, we can cultivate a stronger lifestyle for ourselves and severely reduce the risk for a host of chronic diseases.
That’s why it’s so important to be conscious of the food we eat, and recognize how certain diets can have an impact beyond just our calorie intake. Anti-inflammatory diets are effective for both our mind and body, and can be completely customizable for each individual’s needs. There are no regulations on how much or what to eat, and instead the focus is on integrating foods that have been proven to reduce inflammation, and eliminating foods that advance it.
Low-Inflammatory Foods to Eat
One easy way to start is by eating foods that are full of antioxidants. Antioxidants can help protect our cells from free radicals, harmful molecules that can cause damage to our bodies.
Some classic antioxidant-rich foods are whole fruits and vegetables like berries, kale, cabbage, and beets. Blueberries in particular do so much for our bodies — research shows that they may even support the delay of age-related declines to our brain and motor functions.
We can follow anti-inflammatory eating habits by cooking with unrefined oils, and being mindful of other products we buy, like pasta sauces and dressings, that use highly processed oils including canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil and sunflower oil.
Although diet trends that integrate these oils are becoming increasingly popular, the refined oils are processed with a high temperature, high pressure technique that’s unrecognizable to our bodies, leading to inflammation. Instead, cook with unrefined oils like extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oil to create a robust diet foundation.
Abbot’s Butcher Slow Roasted Chick’n, Savory Ground “Beef” and Spanish Smoked “Chorizo” are crafted using extra virgin olive oil and include simple, unprocessed ingredients that won’t cause inflammation. The olive oil used in our plant-based proteins combines flavor and healthy fats to develop a tender meat alternative designed from rich, whole ingredients.
An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t just apply to savory meals — certain sweet treats and desserts are filled with unnatural and refined sugars that can cause inflammation. Added sugars that are extremely processed, like high fructose corn syrup, can damage the gut by decreasing the good bacteria that lives there, and can shift toxins into our bloodstream. Artificial sweeteners like aspartame are also unhealthy for us because they introduce unrecognizable nutrients into our bodies, and set off the process of inflammation.
Look for foods that have no added sugar and include alternative sweeteners like coconut sugar and monk fruit sweetener instead, as they’re natural and plant-based, and still provide that sweet taste while fighting inflammation.
Natural sugars like the ones found in fruits and vegetables are completely fine, and even encouraged, to eat to contribute to an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. These natural sugars act completely differently from refined sweeteners and aren’t linked to inflammation because they contain more nutrients than just sugar, which restricts harmful blood sugar spikes.
Dark chocolate is another great example of a low-inflammatory dessert — it’s filled with antioxidants and can help lower our blood pressure and decrease the risk of diabetes.
Real-Life Examples of an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
To get inspiration on creating meals for an anti-inflammatory lifestyle, try taking advice from the Mediterranean diet. It’s modeled after cuisines in countries like Italy and Greece that experience far fewer deaths from heart disease, and emphasizes whole foods and healthy fats. It’s also one of the most heart-healthy diets.
The basic groundwork for the Mediterranean diet is consuming a balance of healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains. But the key focus is on anti-inflammatory and plant-based foods that reduce chronic disease and the risk of developing severe health conditions, rather than upping the intake of red meats and processed foods.
Following an anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t mean that we have to sacrifice good taste for our health. When we pick foods that fight inflammation, we’re establishing a series of healthy habits that combine both flavor and nutrition, and will protect ourselves from a range of chronic illnesses. In the long run, both our bodies and taste buds will thank us.
