How inflammatory factors in our food affect a wide variety of health issues

[Realitycheck]

Chicken is actually worse for you than beef or pork, because it is high in arachidonic acid. All you have to do is leave the fat off.

 

I found this audio tape which succinctly summarizes many of the issues related to this area of concern. And it's not just for people recovering from surgeries or in chronic pain situations. There is a lot of evidence that our everyday diets, whether leaning to a net inflammatory or anti-inflammatory effect, plays a crucial role in the development of many common diseases, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, arthritis, and hypertension, and also how some of them that you wouldn't suspect are linked together. Essentially, some of the things that what we have always thought of as natural and healthy are not quite so. This is the next step in the evolution of the health food diet.

 

http://www.inflammationfactor.com/ScienceOfFood.mp3

 

You can get every detail about any food, including the inflammation factor, here.

 

http://www.nutritiondata.com/

[SkepticLance]

Agentchange

 

You need to be very careful of diet fad information. I have just left a discussion with a food faddist on another forum who believes that only alkaline food is healthy. Making all citrus fruit unhealthy. Yeah, riiight!

 

Chicken really has only two health problems.

 

1. Fat levels. Removing skin makes it low fat and a good healthy food.

2. Micro-organisms contamination, and especially Campylobacter. This means that it MUST be cooked well.

 

When preparing chicken, remove the skin and cook it thoroughly, and then just go ahead and enjoy eating the chicken, with no further health fears.

 

I have had an interest in food and health for a long time. I have been inundated with all kinds of weird food fad beliefs, and the internet is loaded with them. When proper science is applied, pretty much all of them disappear.

[Realitycheck]

I would heed your advice, but when your body is in such a vulnerable state, it only makes sense that it would be more vulnerable, more sensitive to that which is not so good for it. When you are healthy, it is much harder to distinguish. Getting hooked up with nutritiondata.com is probably no small order.

[SkepticLance]

Humans evolved as omnivores. That means our bodies adapted to a wide range of foods. We developed the ability to thrive on a wide range. Only foods that are very different to that which we evolved to exploit are likely to harm us in any significant way.

 

Thus, saturated fat can be harmful in large amounts, because the wild game our ancestors killed and ate had very low fat levels. Only domesticated animals are highly fatty, and humans are not adapted to a high saturated fat intake (with the possible exception of Inuits).

 

Sucrose can be harmful in quantity, as our ancestors ate very little of it, and have no adaptation to large amounts.

 

Salt in anything other than small amounts is very harmful to many people of African descent, since their ancestors lived far from the sea or other salt sources, and evolved a gene that prevents salt excretion.

 

Cows milk is OK for most people of European descent, since it has been consumed by them for many thousands of years, and they have a gene to permit lactose utilisation.

 

Some natural foods are toxic, such as nightshade berries which contain an alkaloid that is very poisonous to mammals, but not birds.

 

However, foods such as chicken (or bird meat in general) are fine, since our ancestors ate it a lot and adapted to it. Most food faddists with their ideas of what things cause harm even in small quantities are simply wrong, since the human body is adapted to such a wide range of foods.

[Realitycheck]

I see where you are coming from. Looking up arachidonic acid, it says that this is another fatty acid that is actually used in the body, but I can tell you firsthand that chicken has this described ill effect on inflammation that they describe, so maybe some fatty acids are more essential than others. There is actually a USDA allowance for linoleic acid (it adds up to over a tablespoonful), but many people get it by breaking down arachidonic acid.

 

Tying this aspect of peoples' diets to this plethora of diseases might be making a bit of a stretch, but I can tell you firsthand that the issues are there, even if they are just finer details.

 

I have just left a discussion with a food faddist on another forum who believes that only alkaline food is healthy. Making all citrus fruit unhealthy.

 

There is something to be said about foods which have the effect of making the body more alkaline. Just because an orange is acidic does not necessarily mean that it contributes to your acidity. However, people who are more acidic tend to be less healthy. Regular ingestion of table sugar makes us more acidic.

 

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/alkaline.htm#chart (questionable source, as in I don't necessarily buy into this as the last word on dietting, but it probably is a factor)

[SkepticLance]

Agentchange

 

The alkaline diet is a good example of faulty logic. A lot of the foods that are listed are simply fruits and vegetables. We all know that the recommendation for good health is five or more servings of fruit and vege each day. It appears that some food faddists mistook this for alkaline diets.

 

There are also those who exploit this kind of fad to make money. For example : selling 'black box' gadgets that are supposed to make drinking water alkaline. Needless to say, these gadgets have no therapeutic value whatever, except to the wallet of the vendor.

 

In fact, a number of fruits are acidic and contribute to lowering pH in the gut. However, the human body has a natural pH buffering system for the blood. Eating 'acidic' foods does not make one acidic. Nor does eating alkaline foods raise pH inside our bodies, except in the gut, where it is probably undesirable anyway, since the first part of the gut is supposed to be acidic. Not that the effect is sufficient to be of consequence.

[John Cuthber]

The first post here states that chicken is bad for you because it contains one of the essential fatty acids.

That's a better example of faulty logic than the alkaline diet (no mean feat btw).

[iNow]

I see where you are coming from. Looking up arachidonic acid, it says that this is another fatty acid that is actually used in the body, but I can tell you firsthand that chicken has this described ill effect on inflammation that they describe, so maybe some fatty acids are more essential than others.

 

<...>

 

Tying this aspect of peoples' diets to this plethora of diseases might be making a bit of a stretch, but I can tell you firsthand that the issues are there, even if they are just finer details.

 

<...>

 

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/alkaline.htm#chart (questionable source, as in I don't necessarily buy into this as the last word on dietting, but it probably is a factor)

 

Notice a pattern in what I've bolded? It reminds me a bit of people with high religiosity trying to convince others that god exists because they have experienced the connection first hand. Not that your suggestion above is the same as that, but there are clearly parallels which must be addressed before you should expect anyone to take this too seriously.

[Realitycheck]

That's what I get for sticking up for something that I don't know much about, but chicken is BAAAAAD, I mean, REALLLLLY BAD. Seriously though, do I think that something is wrong with me when this Inflammation Factor rating system calls the shots almost flawlessly? I think that something is wrong with some of your ability to listen, to read black and white, but if you want to just jump on bandwagons, fine. After all, it's just finer details. I don't see arachidonic acid listed by the USDA as an essential fatty acid. Just because a fat is not saturated and our body has the ability to break it down into linoleic acid does not make it an essential fatty acid.

[iNow]

Anecdote [math]\ne[/math] Evidence.

[SkepticLance]

To agentchange

 

I have not personally described arachidonic acid as essential. Others may have, but I have seen no such data.

 

I think this theory is a bit like vitalism - the theory that says life has a special vital life energy (sometimes called chi) which keeps creatures alive and healthy. When mooted, the theory seemed OK. However, today, after 100 years of proper scientific study, there is still no sign of that energy. The theory has been dumped in light of lack of evidence and lack of need for the theory.

 

I suspect your inflammatory factors is in the same situation. It is someone's pet theory, but is simply not needed. Everything it seeks to explain has already been explained using more conventional medical science.

[John Cuthber]

"Others may have, but I have seen no such data."

I did, it seems there are a variety of definitions.

I found a site that lists the fatty acid composition of foods. Chicken certainly contains a relatively large amount of this particular acid. So does human milk. Hardly a smoking gun.

http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2001/pdf/7304x0685.pdf

[Realitycheck]

Well, if you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it, arachidonic acid is responsible for initiating the inflammatory response in the body.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18370643?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

So yes, milk is technically on the not-so-good list, as well. I jumped off the milk wagon for a few days to get some calcium just to make sure and sure enough, it wasn't such a good few days. What I want to know is why isn't the body mediating the level of this? Obviously, we need some of it to perform its function, but that does not necessarily mean that the more we eat, the more inflamed we should become. Maybe we'll have to leave that to the genetic engineers to fix that. The inflammatory stimulus is there - post-op, muscles sore from rehab, etc. So I drink all this milk when I already know that I should be eating more dark green leafy vegetables instead, but I just had to beat my head against this wall one more time, just to be sure.

 

The logic goes that some people don't eat well enough to ever fully recover from minor cases of inflammation and they wind up in a vicious circle of "chronic systemic low-grade inflammation," largely because they eat all of these foods which contribute to inflammation until, voila, they have arthritis or heart disease or whatever. However, I am not so sure that the inflammatory factor is the biggest cause of these diseases, but I could easily be wrong. I just have not found any concrete links on Pub Med. Well, I did actually find a couple.

 

Similar to other chronic illnesses, covered in the remainder of this issue, a low-grade chronic inflammatory process may be of particular relevance in the development of tissue wasting in these patients. Whereas the presence of immune activation in chronic heart failure is now widely accepted, as well as the prognostic relevance of chronic inflammation, the site and the source of cytokine production remain the object of intense research. Although the inciting event is located in the heart, cross-talk between the myocardium on the one hand, and the immune system, peripheral tissues and organs on the other hand, will lead to the overproduction of proinflammatory cytokines and, inevitably, to their detrimental effects. The specific problems related to heart failure progression and inflammatory activation are described in this review.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12163208?ordinalpos=90&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

Finally, low-grade chronic inflammation that is persistent, as can be seen in obesity, diabetes, and the metabolic syndrome, can lead to serious health risks. Thus, inflammatory states within a range from chronic low-grade to acute severe responses can have profound effects on morbidity and manifest an increased risk of mortality. Therapies to down-regulate the systemic inflammatory response by targeting the source of inflammation may dramatically improve patient outcome in chronic inflammatory states and some acute inflammatory conditions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18240543?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

[Mr Skeptic]

I looked up arachidonic acid, which should have been your first step when someone tells you it is a dangerous thing.

 

Arachidonic acid is one of the essential fatty acids required by most mammals. Some mammals lack the ability to—or have a very limited capacity to—convert linoleic acid into arachidonic acid, making it an essential part of their diet. Since little or no arachidonic acid is found in plants, such animals are obligate carnivores; the cat is a common example.

 

So we must have the ability to make our own since we are not obligate carnivores. However, as an essential fatty acid we need it, either we make our own or we eat some.

[SkepticLance]

You should also be careful about the causes of disease. There are, in fact, four main categories of disease causes, plus a few minor causes. Infectious, geriatric, nutritional, genetic. To suggest one cause for too many diseases, unless it is one of the big four just listed is to stick your head on the chopping block, metaphorically.

 

Inflammation is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is part of the immune response and is essential to fighting infection. When it happens in the wrong circumstances, as with auto-immune illness, it may be bad. It is also implicated in cardio-vacular disease along with atherosclerosis. However, it is certainly not a major cause of a wide range of ills. It is a natural part of the body's functioning, and is mostly an action that improves health long run.