The Anti-Inflammatory Diet

An important step in creating a healthy kitchen is to read and understand food labels. When you begin restocking your pantry, food labels are your best resource to assess what to keep and what to toss. This practice will also give you an overview of your choices in the supermarket, and is a good starting point to modify your shopping habits. Use the list below to determine which items to discard. Many of these ingredients are considered pro-inflammatory and therefore unfavorable to healthy aging. If the list of ingredients contains one or more of these undesirables, toss and don't buy again!

• Animal fat, such as lard
• Artificial sweeteners or non-nutritive sweeteners
• Coconut oil
• Corn oil
• Cottonseed oil
• Fractionated oil
• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil or vegetable shortening
• Margarine
• Palm or palm kernel oil
• Blended vegetable oils
• Safflower oil
• Soybean oil
• Sunflower oil

Note that high-oleic versions of sunflower or safflower oils are acceptable, as they have fatty acid profiles closer to that of olive oil.

Eat a variety of fresh, whole foods such as fruits and vegetables, and minimize your intake of processed and fast foods. Getting started is simple - try these four steps:

• Step One: Look at your carbs. The majority of carbohydrates in your diet should be in the form of less-refined, less-processed foods with a low glycemic load. You can do this by replacing your snack foods made with wheat flour and sugar with whole grains, beans, winter squashes, and sweet potatoes.
• Step Two: Replace your cooking oil. Instead of safflower and sunflower oils, corn oil, cottonseed oil, mixed vegetable oils, butter and margarine, use extra-virgin olive oil as your main cooking oil (for a neutral tasting oil, use expeller-pressed, organic canola oil).
• Step Three: Decrease your consumption of animal protein. Except for fish (such as omega-3 rich salmon) and reduced-fat dairy products, animal derived protein should be limited. You can easily replace meat with vegetable protein such as beans, legumes and whole soy foods.
• Step Four: Eat more fiber. Try to eat 40 grams of fiber a day, simple to do if you increase your consumption of fruit, especially berries, vegetables and whole grains.