The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan [Paperback]

Monica Reinagel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007

A revolutionary diet to help you lose weight and control disease-causing inflammation

The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan will help you achieve your ideal weight--without fad dieting--while also reducing pain and allergies, slowing the aging process, and dramatically reducing your risk for dozens of medical problems. This flexible, easy-to-follow program is the ideal nutritional solution for every member of the family.

At the heart of the program is the revolutionary IF Rating system that, for the first time, tells you the inflammatory or anti-inflammatory effects of all of the foods you eat. The IF Rating integrates more than twenty different nutritional factors, including essential fatty acids, glycemic index, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory compounds into a single rating which guides your food choices for the day.

You no longer have to worry about choosing the right types of carbs or fats, or even counting calories--the IF Rating combines all those factors into a simple, holistic system for healthy eating! And unlike other programs that focus only on carbohydrates or fats, the IF Rating system also shows you which proteins are healthy and which provoke inflammation.

It all adds up to a uniquely healthful, easy to follow diet plan that fights illness and promotes weight loss! The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan gives you:

• IF Ratings for more than 1,500 common foods, listed both alphabetically and by categories, such as “Breakfast Cereals” and “Meats”
• Self-assessments for measuring your level of systemic inflammation
• A choice of three customizable eating plans: Preventative/Maintenance, Therapeutic, and Accelerated Weight-Loss
• Three weeks worth of daily meal plans and dozens of delicious anti-inflammatory recipes

With The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan, you'll learn how to stop the silent enemy in its tracks and get started on the road to a longer, healthier, more vibrant life--today.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan

"Cellular inflammation is the basis for all the most common degenerative diseases that plague the majority of our population. The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan shows you exactly how to prevent--and even reverse--this deadly process."
--Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Mother-Daughter Wisdom, The Wisdom of Menopause, and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"Inflammation contributes to more pain, disease, and disability than any other condition. Unfortunately, many people unwittingly eat foods that greatly contribute to inflammation. This useful book explains how to eat to remain inflammation-free and healthy."
--Susan M. Lark, M.D., author of Fibroid Tumors & Endometriosis Self-Help Book and The Lark Letter newsletter

"Just what the doctor ordered! When it comes to making the latest research practical and delicious, Monica Reinagel's The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan is a healing prescription you can't beat!"
--Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., author of The Fat Flush Plan and Before the Change

About the Author

Monica Reinagel, M.S., C.N.S., is the author of several health books and creator of the IF Rating™ system for estimating the inflammatory effects of foods. She is Chief Nutritionist for NutritionData.com, the internet's leading nutrition site, where she writes a daily blog on health and nutrition and a bi-weekly e-letter read by 50,000 subscribers. Monica is also a regular contributor to Epicurious.com, national magazines, and radio programs. Monica holds a Master's Degree in Human Nutrition and is a board-certified nutrition specialist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071486011
• ISBN-13: 978-0071486019
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For more about me and what I'm up to, please visit my website at NutritionOverEasy.com where I regularly post nutrition Q&A, videos, new recipes I've developed, and other fun stuff. Also, connect with me on Facebook and Twitter! Just search for NutritionDiva.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

143 of 148 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Healthy Diet Plan, February 17, 2006

By 

Ranch Girl (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan (Hardcover)

Considering the inflammatory nature of the average American diet, the dietary recommendations in this book are a huge step in the right direction. Many of the health problems that are prevalent in our society are at least partially caused by inflammation (e.g. heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, arthritis). The author explains that many factors determine whether a particular food works in your body to fight or promote inflammation. Some of these factors include glycemic load, fat composition, antioxidant and vitamin content. She has created a formula that she uses to rate individual foods as to how inflammatory or anti-inflammatory they are.

About one third of the book is devoted to charts that rate individual foods. Another third is devoted to recipes and meal planning. The other third explains the factors that cause inflammation and how the diet plan works. Your goal in the diet is to make sure that all the foods you consume during a single day have an overall anti-inflammatory effect (by adding up the individual ratings of each food), and that you don't consume more than 65 grams of fat (55 grams for weight loss). It is a simple concept, but the calculations could be quite time-consuming. The information is useful even if you choose not to do the calculations.

There are some areas where I feel the author has fallen short. She doesn't mention the inflammatory xeno-estrogens in pesticides that also accumulate in animal fat. When she lists beef as an anti-inflammatory meat she doesn't mention whether she has taken into account all the hormones that are fed to cattle and end up being stored in beef fat. Surprisingly, blueberries are rated as slightly inflammatory. This seems odd since a cup of blueberries has a glycemic load of 5, which is extremely low, and blueberries contain more antioxidants than almost any other fruit or vegetable. Several other fruits and vegetables with low glycemic loads and lots of antioxidants (such as black beans) were also rated as slightly inflammatory.

Overall, there is a lot of useful information here that can be used to improve your diet and your health. Whether you have inflammation-related disease or not, this book can help you make healthy choices.

100 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More conflicting and confusing than helpful, May 25, 2007

By 

Music lover "PJD" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan (Paperback)

You're probably investigating this book because like me, you're already interested in the concept of "inflammatory foods" but you've spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to ascertain exactly which foods are inflammatory and which are not. You're found a lot of conflicting advice from the usual Oprah Gurus: Weil says avoid chicken, Perricone says chicken is great. Both say avoid pasta and sugar, and eat whole grains, but their fruit, veggie and legume lists vary. What to do?

Reinagel has attempted to clear the air by creating the "Inflammation Rating" (I.R.) system which weighs many factors such as glycemic load and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals. Unfortunately, you're going to come away even more confused. Not only does she contradict nearly everything the other Oprah Gurus say (for example, with an I.R. of -135, a serving of highly touted whole grain millet is twice as inflammatory as a serving of pasta) but she contradicts HERSELF repeatedly.

For example, she writes "Certain foods...such as pineapple...have potent - almost druglike - anti-inflammatory actions...They can be used to great advantage in an inflammation-reducing diet." So then why does a cup of fresh pineapple appear in the Rating Chart at -37, a cup of canned -108? That's worse than a frozen waffle (-85)!

To her credit, she also repeatedly says you're supposed to use the rating chart to balance inflammatory foods with anti-inflammatory ones...you're NOT intended to avoid foods with negative ratings. For example, add onions or tumeric to those beans. And she warns against the monotonous consumption of so-called "super foods" and urges us instead to eat a varied, wholesome and colorful diet. Which includes most of those beans, grains, fruits and nuts on the negative end of the scale, so what's the point of even having a scale?

She does suggest that you have your doctor do a blood test for C-reactive protein (CRP) which will tell you whether you have inflammation or not. I'd say first find out whether you even have a problem before you expend too much energy trying to fix it.

I kept flashing back to Frances Moore Lappe's DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET which taught us to tediously combine various foods with the goal of "protein complementarity." That concept has long since been debunked...I'm guessing that eventually, the I.R. diet plan will end up in the same dust heap of failed promises.

187 of 218 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars author confuses inflammation with insulin resistance, November 4, 2006

By 

Happy Traveller (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan (Hardcover)

I was very disappointed with this book. The author confuses inflammation with insulin resistance, and ends up with a mish-mash of ratings that make the mistake of trying to combine the two. There are already two great eating plans for insulin resistance, The Zone and South Beach. However, an anti-inflammatory diet is very different: foods like tomatoes, for example, should not be part of an anti-inflammatory eating plan. So I would suggest that readers looking for a true anti-inflammatory diet book, skip this one and instead take a look at The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book, by Jessica K. Black, ND. You will find there lots of great recipes and a much more helpful (and accurate) table of "Foods to Eat" and "Foods to Avoid".