Title : An anti inflammatory food index
Abstract:
Inflammation is increasingly believed to be one of the main drivers of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. It is urgent to learn and to teach people how to reduce the causes of inflammation. An anti-inflammatory lifestyle is likely to lead to better health outcomes, including the prevention of disease, and the saving of unnecessary expenditures on the management of chronic disease. One of the major sources of inflammation is a poor diet. Multiple dietary sources of inflammation have been identified. In the present work, we take a quantitative approach. We grade many popular basic foods, including as many staple foods as possible, on the various dimensions of inflammation. We combine these variables to create a new composite index that assigns a number, on a scale of 0 to 100, to a food. This index does not measure a food’s nutritional value, but rather its anti-inflammatory value. We find that the best scoring foods on this index correspond to the recommended foods of some of the most respected diets. Above all, the most anti-inflammatory foods resemble those recommended in Dr. Mark Hyman’s pegan diet.
Audience Take Away Notes:
- The audience should get a better understanding of the connections between diet and disease.
- This presentation should assist practitioners in designing a diet conducive to their patients’ well-being.
- There is an opportunity to do further research to quantify the anti-inflammatory properties of popular food staples.
