What the heck is inflammation? There are foods that cause inflammation? It is your body’s response to any kind of injury, an infection, or an allergy. This is normal. But there is another kind of inflammation. You can actually cause chronic inflammation in your body just by the food choices you make!

I bet that you want to look older than you are, have no energy, bring on things like heart disease, cancer, dementia, and die at an early age, right? Well, I would hope not! But you know what? Based on the way most people eat these days, that is exactly what they are telling their body to do. Let me say that again! Based on what you eat, you are telling your body to either react in a healthy way or to make it diseased!

Hilga just got home from a small holiday party that the office was having. The first thing they asked her when she got into work was what kind of pizza do you want for lunch? Her response: “I don’t eat Domino’s pizza!” She brought her own healthy lunch, as usual. The two other over weight women in the office were snacking on all the holiday garbage and telling Hilga, “hey, you should have some of this!”

Hilga thought to herself, why? So I can look like you? Not to mention that processed sugar is top of the list for foods that cause inflammation. And why is it that people who like to eat garbage foods, and admit that they do, try to get everyone else to eat “their way.” So they can feel less guilty? There parting comment was “we have to get you to eat more!”

How sad is that! The two over weight women telling the fit person to eat more. Yet all they talk about is dieting and how they have to lose weight. It’s not working! Hilga: Winning! The truth is until people realize exactly what the relationship is between what you put in the hole in your face, and your health, you won’t change! Even when some people realize the dangers of what they are eating, they still do it any way. Take smokers for example. They just don’t care about their health!

For adults over age thirty five, chronic inflammation will show up as unhealthy lifestyle choices force substances to invade the body, and attack healthy cells instead protecting them. When you have unhealthy cells, you have premature ageing: older looking skin, weak bones, lack of energy, and clouded brain function. Scientific research in the past decade has revealed that chronic inflammation caused by poor lifestyle choices, bad food is number one, are the main cause of things like Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, cancer, heart attacks, and others.

These are the main foods that cause inflammation:

Sugar: any kind of processed sugar that does not come naturally from sources like fruit.

Hydrogenated Oils: partially hydrogenated oils, vegetable shortening, margarine

Processed Foods: hey, for me if it’s got more than one ingredient on the label, or mostly if it even has a label, it’s considered processed. If you don’t know what the ingredient is, don’t eat it!

Cooking Oils: these are oils that are high in omega-6, and low in omega-3’s: grape seed oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil all high in omega-6 fatty acids.

Hormone laden beef, not raised naturally

Alcohol: A little beer or organic wine is okay, but more than a few causes inflammation in the liver.

Artificial Ingredients: all the garbage that you find in pre-packaged foods that help preserve those foods for a long shelf life. Again, when you read these chemical names on an ingredient label, and don’t know what they are, don’t eat them!

So, these are main foods that cause inflammation. If you will eat a whole food diet free of chemicals and preservatives, you can avoid premature ageing! Check back tomorrow when I’ll talk about foods that are anti-ageing!