Inflammatory by Design?

Some modern processed foods seem designed to cause chronic inflammation -- they combine inflammatory food commodities to replace natural foods.

Of the first six major components (more abundant than salt) of a popular processed food dressing, only water and vinegar are absent from the list of major contributors to chronic inflammation.

“Ingredients: water, soybean oil, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, sugar, salt, enzyme modified egg yolks, mustard flour, artificial color, potassium sorbate as a preservative, paprika, spice, natural flavor, dried garlic, beta carotene (color)”

The soybean oil is primarily an inflammatory omega-6 vegetable oil. HFCS is inflammatory both because it causes a rapid spike in blood glucose and insulin, but because the fructose is a sweet sugar that is even more active than glucose in glycation reactions (adding sugars to amino acids or proteins) that produce the advanced glycation end products that menace diabetics and that cross-link collagen and accelerate the aging of skin and connective tissue. The food starch and sugar both contribute to inflammation through rapid spiking of blood glucose and insulin.

This mayonnaise substitute would be expected to be highly inflammatory and I would recommend that anyone trying to minimize chronic inflammation using fish oil omega-3 supplements should stick to the real thing and pay careful attention to any oils added. Mayonnaise can be whipped up from egg yolks and olive oil. Flax seed oil could also be used -- it isn’t very effective as an anti-inflammatory omega-3 oil, but it is safer than the omega-6 rich vegetable oils. The short, 18C, omega-3 fatty acids can be lengthened to anti-inflammatory 20C (EPA) and 22C (DHA) versions, but the omega-6 fatty acids inhibit that conversion. In this context, I think that saturated fats would be safer than the inflammatory omega-6 soybean oil or its even more incendiary cousin, corn oil .

I am very skeptical of the evidence used to advise the use of unsaturated vegetable oil in place of saturated fats for heart health. Lowering LDL and triglycerides by diet or drugs does not apparently lower heart attack risk. I think that the data all point toward chronic inflammation as the actual culprit. All of the treatments that reduce chronic inflammation (most notably diet and exercise, or COX inhibitors) also decrease the risk of heart disease and death.