Customer Reviews

The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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".

I purchased this book because I knew that inflammation theory has a lot of credibility with Andrew Weil and some others in the medical community at present. A limitation of the book is that the reader is not told in any detail how the inflammation index that is so central to the plan is derived. Taking it on faith, I tried it and it did reveal some things: for example, a personal preference for fruit and whole-grains over vegetables that almost certainly was not an entirely good thing. It does give you a way to quantify those kinds of things, and it would be hard to imagine how it could be misused unless someone tried to slather huge quantities of anti-inflammatory curry and ginger on top of an unhealthy diet. All in all, a provocative book that doesn't contradict common-sense good principles of diet and will likely improve your diet and make you healthier if you take the trouble to do the math. Also, the recipes are good.

I've tried them all, every diet that is. Not only have I tried a lot of diets to lose weight, I've also worked with other books on eating to control inflammation. This is a great approach. I feel and look the best I've felt in years. The proof has been in testing the foods in my own body. I feel MUCH better and I'm finally losing weight after 2 years of chronic fatique and puzzling weight-gain in spite of eating a healthy diet and taking a lot of the right supplements. You can use the tables to change your current eating and food purchasing habits if following the diet plan isn't for you. That's what I did and it worked like a charm. I own a fitness club and am very familiar with everything out there. This is a gem. Buy it and use it. Eliminate the more inflammatory foods you currently eat and spike your diet with powerful anti-inflammatory foods and see what happens!

This book offers up sound dietary advice. Foods are rated according to a formula that predicts how inflammatory they are to your body. The formula is not specified, although the factors that are considered are listed. I would have liked more information as to how much weight was given to the various nutrients and why. Information not contained in the USDA food database wasn't included in the formula. Therefore, a number of factors, such micronutrients, pesticide residues, etc. are not addressed. The inflammatory effects of eating charbroiled foods or deep fried foods are not discussed. This is an interesting attempt at quantifying the anti-inflammatory and inflammatory qualities of most common foods, and for the most part is quite helpful.

Inflammation is a very important topic that writers are eager to exploit. This one has some good information, but leaves out much that is vital to understanding inflammation. Rating foods for inflammation gives a false sense of good and bad foods, becaus inflammation is only one of several factors to judge the value of a food. For better treatment of the subject try THE INFLAMMATION SYNDROME and HONEST NUTRITION.

If you want to know more about inflammation and disease, read "Inflammation Nation" by Floyd H. Chilton, Ph.D. Monica says up front she doesn't go into a lot of detail and refers readers to his book.

A positive IF Rating is better than a negative IF Rating. This book could easily lead uninformed readers to think that it's better to eat a turkey hot dog (an IF Rating of -8) instead of an apple (an IF Rating of -62)! We eat hot dogs RARELY and try to eat an apple a day. Sorry, but from a nutritional standpoint, apples have to be better. Also, using artificial sweetners (instead of natural sugar which can cause a spike in your blood glucose level) advocated by both Chilton and Reinagel is a no-no in my book. Chilton does, however, explains how high levels of glucose and insulin are linked to the production of inflammatory messengers and this is another reason why everyone, not just diabetics, should pay attention to the glycemic load of a food. Monica does not go into this in her book, but again, she says that right up front.

The Inflammatory Rating (IF Rating) table can be off-putting and overwhelming. It will make you think you should just throw up your hands and eat pizza and drink beer everyday...we're gonna die someday, right? So why not live it up! I've read a lot about organics, the "evils" of dairy products, the hype about soy (and why it's not a miracle food), how our beliefs (about God, good food, bad food, conspiracies...you name it) plays an important role in our health and well-being and I've come to this conclusion: educate yourself as much as you can about everything that concerns you. Take what feels right at the time and leave the rest for a later time...if that later time ever comes. Don't worry so much about every little thing because you miss out on life happening right now if you do.

I gave this book three stars for the recipes only. I've looked online for further information on IF Ratings and so far the info online keeps referring me to this book's information. HOWEVER, one website says that a kiwi fruit has a positive 14 and her book has a -14...and they claim to base their ratings on how Monica comes up with her ratings! Here's another one: an apple is rated -21 on the website and Monica rates it in her table as -62. I give up.

One reviewer asked why lower levels of omega-3's in farm raised salmon would make it worse to eat than not having any omega-3's at all. Here's where Chilton's book explains all of that. It's not the reduced amount of omega-3's as much as it is the existance of preformed arachidonic acid (AA...the abbreviation he uses or ARA...the abbreviation Monica uses). He cites AA as a major cause of inflammation in our nation. He uses very good analogies to explain difficult biological processes that happen in our bodies. We have an over-abundance of AA in our diet and subsequently in our bodies. The high levels of AA causes the production of inflammatory messengers, which in turn creates a body in which it is constantly thinking it has to battle even the most innocuous of invaders, such as pollen or dust. Chilton describes a body that has too much inflammation as trigger happy...shooting at everything that goes bump in the night.

I have to agree with other posts on some of the foods that are pro-inflammatory, like cranberry juice, grapes, yoghurt, etc. and the pro use of Splenda...I take that with a grain of salt! But there is a lot of merit to learning about the effects arachidonic acid has on our health and to look for more anti-inflammatory foods. Everything in moderation!

I love this book. It really is amazing how the food you eat affects your health. Ms. Reinagel makes it easy to understand inflammation and how it hurts your body.

The best part about this book are the recipes and menu ideas. Ms. Reinagel is a trained chef and she offers excellent ideas so that following her diet won't get boring.

It is only a matter of time before all of the immunological research out there finally makes it into the mainstream and folks will realize how big this book really is. Having taken (and barely survived) a college level immunology class, I can tell you with some certainty that the role inflammation plays in our overall health and longevity is a complex topic to tackle in a book like this. The author should be given great credit for doing something that the scientific community has yet to do and that is to communicate how and why it is vital to reduce inflammation in our bodies to help allow our immune system to work most optimally. Even better is that the recipes in this book (unlike some of the cookbooks and health books I own) actually work! And, many of them are low salt or salt free and they still actually taste good.