Reducing Inflammatory Foods

[Rahul T]

Just started my vegan whole30 and on day 6. Yay!! I am also reading It Starts With Food and finding it helpful in understanding the underlying reasoning, which helps keep motivation up.

As I understand it, the idea is to eliminate all inflammatory foods and then slowly introduce ingredients to gauge their effect on our body. Given this, why are red meats allowed as part of whole30? The link between animal fats and inflammation has been established well beyond doubt, and so is its harmful effect on the gut bacterial fauna (which in turn leads to inflammation and tissue damage). Grilling it only makes the effect more potent. So why are *any* animal products allowed (instead of merely cutting down on dairy) as part of whole30?

Has anyone here who has, e.g., arthritis or IBS here noticed difference after whole30  with vs without animal products?

Thanks!

Rahul 

[ladyshanny]

We believe that eating dense animal protein sources makes you healthier, and that there are some serious drawbacks to conventional vegetarian protein sources. This is borne out in the thousands of people who have come to Whole30 from Standard American Diets and have improved their health multiple-fold. 

http://whole9life.com/2013/02/eating-meat-a-primer-for-the-meat-challenged-2/

 

[Rahul T]

Thanks for the article! As a former-former vegetarian, when Is started eating meat, getting used to texture was very difficult I remember starting with not-too-fishy fish and chicken before getting my tastebuds ready for devouring a ribeye! The ethical aspects are also addressed there nicely in"conscientious omnivore" set of articles. But the question of saturated fats in animal-based foods (dairy, eggs, meat except fish) causing inflammation still remains unaddressed. Could you please throw some light on it? Thanks!

Peace...

Rahul

[SugarcubeOD]

Take a read through these articles and then see if you can find some other articles about saturated fat from trusted sources.  You could also google 'whole30 saturated fat' and probably find a bunch of discussions on this forum already that has the information you're looking for so we don't have to start retyping it all

https://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-cholesterol-and-saturated-fat-are-not-the-enemy/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/it-aint-the-fat-people

https://whole30.com/tag/saturated-fat/

 

[littleg]

My own personal bias is that the big population based studies showing a link between inflammation and meat consumption are not trying (nor able) to control well for meat *quality*.  If Joe Schmoe eats Burking King everyday for lunch his red meat consumption is pretty high... but so are his intakes of processed seed oils, sugar, preservatives, etc - thus it is impossible to say if his inflammation is really due to eating more meat than Jane next door who eats veggie subs...  I did a quick pubmed search and found this article which tries to address the issue of meat quality.  And what do you know - more meat --> lower inflammatory markers.  If you take the time to read through some of this article's citations you might find other articles addressing the topic.

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/137/2/363/4664544  

At the end of the day this way of eating is a big personal 30 day experiment.  If you care to, get some labs done before you start and then once you are done.  If you drastically increase meat consumption and end up more inflamed while following the rest of the W30s recommendations then maybe more meat isn't best for your current gut/hormones/DNA...  only one way to find out

[Rahul T]

Thanks for the links SugarCubeOD, but the articles do not address the issue I am raising, which is inflammation. I am not coming from what is now pretty much invalidated viewpoint of "fat is bad" or "saturated fat is bad for cardiovascular health", which is what the articles you listed address. 

littleg: Thanks! That's the issue I am talking about. I agree with you on population studies and don't read too much into them for the reasons you stated, no matter how fancy the multivariate methods they use.  I unfortunately didn't get full labs done before starting whole30 (I only blood sugar, cholesterol, CBC, etc. but I would have liked to have hormones and CRP). Anyways, the meat-inflammation link I am talking about is not based off a population correlation study, but a glycan present in meat, which promotes inflammation. E.g.:

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/health/11-08RedMeatCancer.asp

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25548184

Thanks for the article. There's much to read & explore and much to experiment!

[littleg]

That is the thing about research.  You can find whatever data you want to support your theory.  Or be a corrupt scientist and do the same   You sound like you are pretty convinced of this link between meat and inflammation so don't push it.  Don't eat meat.  If you don't enjoy eating it and have a religious , ethical or scientific inkling that isn't good for you - so be it.  But unless you also find you don't need much protein I suspect you can find lots of articles about the detrimental effects of unsprouted legumes and soy and other sources of vegetarian protein.  

In my background with human subject research (vs mouse or in vitro models) I've seen data of hundreds, if not thousands, of meat eaters with very low CRP levels.