Healthy Food Choices for the Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Video Transcript

MARY HONDROS: All right now we're going to talk about the "Anti-inflammatory Diet." In general, inflammation in your body is normal and it's what helps heal your body when you have something wrong. However, chronic inflammation which occurs inside your arteries and inside your body is not a good thing and it refers to the inflammation that happens in your arteries when things like plaque builds up. So that type of inflammation we don't want in the body. The anti-inflammatory diet kind of focuses on the foods that promote inflammation like saturated fats and foods that are high in fat and then foods that help reduce inflammation like fish, whole grains, foods high in antioxidants and phytochemicals like fresh fruits and vegetables. So the idea behind this diet is that if you consume less saturated fat and total fat, you're consuming an anti-inflammatory diet. There's also some herbs like Glucosamine and Chondroitin which are shown to reduce levels of inflammation in the body. So those are some things that you could try as well if you're following this diet. So if you're trying to follow the anti-inflammatory diet, the first thing I would suggest is maintaining a healthy weight because the higher your body weight goes up, the more the levels of inflammation rise in your body. So exercise 30 minutes a day for most days of the week to maintain your weight. Make the basis of your diet unprocessed, whole grains and vegetables. Those are going to keep inflammation levels down. And consume 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, try to eat fish twice a week because it contains Omega 3 fatty acids. And you can get this from canned salmon, canned tuna. Any of those are good sources of fish. It doesn't have to be fresh to count as a serving of fish. So try to consume that twice a week in place of meat. It helps keep inflammation down. And lastly, if you're cooking, switch to cooking with canola or olive oil or something like that because those oils that come from vegetables have been shown to have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So those are four components of the anti-inflammatory diet.