Anti-inflammatory foods, minus the wishful thinking

Anti-inflammatory is the most abused phrase in food marketing, and it is a shame, because underneath the noise there is a genuinely well-evidenced dietary pattern. The problem is that the pattern is boring to sell and the individual ingredients are not.

I cook for a living and trained in naturopathic nutrition, and the thing that consistently surprises people is how much the preparation decides the outcome. You can buy every item on this list and get very little from most of them.

Chronic versus acute

Acute inflammation is the swelling around a sprained ankle. It is useful and it resolves. Chronic low-grade inflammation is a persistent background state associated with heart disease, type 2 diabetes and several other long-term conditions.

Food influences the second one, slowly, as a pattern. No meal reduces inflammation the way ibuprofen does, and anything promising that is selling something.

The list, with the cooking that makes it work

Extra virgin olive oil

The single best-evidenced item here. It contains oleocanthal, a compound that acts on the same pathway as ibuprofen, though far more weakly. The peppery catch at the back of your throat from a good oil is literally oleocanthal. A bland oil has less.

Buy it in dark glass and use it as your default fat. The idea that you cannot cook with it is largely a myth at normal domestic temperatures. Its smoke point is well above most pan cooking.

Turmeric, but only prepared correctly

Curcumin has genuine anti-inflammatory activity and terrible bioavailability. On its own, very little reaches your bloodstream.

Two things change that substantially: fat, because curcumin is fat-soluble, and piperine from black pepper, which slows its breakdown considerably. This is why traditional preparations bloom turmeric in oil with pepper, and why a turmeric capsule taken with water is close to pointless.

Oily fish

EPA and DHA are directly anti-inflammatory, and the evidence is strong. Salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring. Twice a week. Tinned counts and costs a fraction of fresh.

Leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables

Polyphenols, sulforaphane, folate, magnesium. Do not boil them to death. Water-soluble compounds leave with the water. Steam, sauté, or roast.

Berries

Anthocyanins, the compounds giving them their colour, have solid anti-inflammatory evidence. Frozen are nutritionally comparable to fresh and considerably cheaper, which matters if this is going to be a habit rather than a phase.

Nuts, especially walnuts

Omega-3, vitamin E, polyphenols. A handful daily is the quantity used in most of the research.

What drives inflammation up

How I would actually eat this

• Switch your default cooking fat to extra virgin olive oil. One change, applied to everything you cook.
• Bloom your spices in that oil at the start of cooking, with a grind of black pepper. Thirty seconds.
• Tinned sardines or mackerel twice a week. Cheap, fast, and the same omega-3 as the expensive version.
• Frozen berries in the freezer permanently, so the habit survives a bad week.
• A handful of walnuts, not a bag.

None of this is exotic and none of it is expensive. That is rather the point. The pattern is what carries the evidence, and a pattern has to be affordable to persist.

Common questions