Inflammed?

Toxins inflame.  Obesity inflames.  Sugar inflames?  A ravaging beast of the 21st century: inflammation.  Inflammation is our bodily reaction to harmful stimuli, protecting our body by removing injurious stimuli and initiating healing (taken from the Wikipedia entry on inflammation).  Without inflammation, our wounds would not heal.  We need the response.  But longer term, chronic inflammation leads to unnecessary "bystander" damage to tissue when the initial "removal" response is no longer needed.  Why is this important?  Because what we eat can either propagate the occurrence of inflammation or what we eat can help fuel our anti-inflammatory body reaction.  Without an anti-inflammatory response, cellular destruction results, and disorders and disesases like cancer follow.  And, I read in an abstract (I pasted the link below) that obesity (read: extra fat) represents a state of chronic low-level inflammation.  Which explains why studies are linking obesity to major diseases.

I want more anti-inflammatories!  What should I eat? (btw, I made up that term anti-inflammatories)

A top contender on the anti-inflammatory list is turmeric.  It is the yellow powder used in curry.  Turmeric is a powerful anti-inflammatory, and has been used for generations in India.  Eat curry!  I make it in chicken, potatoes and carrots - yum - in a Chinese curry sauce.  Other anti-inflammatory foods include garlic, onion, cruciferous vegetables, fennel, ginger, raspberries, blueberries, goji berries just to name a few.

I typically saute the vegetables - eat them fresh and eat them often. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1783744/