Among the many things they quantify for each food is its Nutrition Facts (just like the label on packaged foods); Glycemic Load, caloric ratio of carbs/fats/proteins, fullness factor, ratings for optimal weight loss or weight gain, nutrient balance and amino acid graphs, complete detailed nutrient breakdown of vitamins, minerals, fats, aminos, calories, carbs, fiber, and sterols.
There are lots of other useful tools on the site as well, so check it out! Today, I was curious about the nutritional value of rhubarb, a great early summer "vegetable" that cooks up so tasty in pies and compote. To maintain the low glycemic rating I sweetened it with agave syrup, and thickened it with arrowroot powder (no corn!). Be Well, Janis
The website includes the following "About" comments:
Nutrition Data's continuing goal is to provide the most accurate and comprehensive nutrition analysis available, and to make it accessible and understandable to all.
The information in Nutrition Data's database comes from the USDA's National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference and is supplemented by listings provided by restaurants and food manufacturers. The source for each individual food item is listed in the footnotes of that food's analysis page. In addition to food composition data, Nutrition Data also provides a variety of proprietary tools to analyze and interpret that data. These interpretations represent Nutrition Data's opinion and are based on calculations derived from Daily Reference Values (DRVs), Reference Daily Intakes (RDIs), published research, and recommendations of the FDA.
If you've been following the health news for the past couple of years, you've probably tuned into the fact that many experts (including Andrew Weil, Barry Sears, Nicholas Perricone, Leo Galland, and yours truly) recommend an anti-inflammatory diet as a way to forestall aging and disease. For the benefit of those interested in this aspect of nutrition, Nutrition Data displays the IF (Inflammation Factor) Rating of foods and recipes as part of the detailed nutrition analysis.
Over the past few weeks, I've gotten a lot of questions about the IF Ratings of various foods. For example:
Q. Whole grains are supposed to be good for you and have an overall anti-inflammatory effect on the body, but your data on, e.g., barley and oats, indicates a high inflammatory effect. Could you please explain this?
Q. Why is the IF Rating for farmed salmon (-421) so much lower then the rating for wild salmon (+901). Both are salmon. Why there is such a big difference in the IF?
Q. I don't understand why walnuts have a negative IF Rating. I've heard that they are anti-inflammatory because they are high in omega-3 fats.
Q. Can you explain why an apple would be considered an inflammatory food?
First, a bit of background on how the IF Ratings (and I) came to be part of ND:
I developed the IF Rating system in 2005, as a way to estimate the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory potential of foods and combinations of foods. In 2006, I published The Inflammation Free Diet Plan, a book in which I detailed how the IF Rating system is calculated and how to use it. After the book and the IF Ratings were published, NutritionData.com (with my permission) added the IF Ratings to the site as part of its food and recipe analysis. Subsequently, I was invited to be a nutrition advisor for ND.
Even before I become a member of the ND team, I was delighted to make the IF Ratings available as part of NutritionData's analysis. However, one downside of making the ratings more widely available is that they now appear without the explanatory information included in the book. All of the above questions, for example, are addressed in The Inflammation Free Diet Plan.
Let me try to clear up a few of the most common misunderstandings:
Perhaps the most common misunderstanding is that all “healthy” foods are anti-inflammatory and all “unhealthy” foods are inflammatory. It’s a little more complex than that. The IF Rating system evaluates foods according to over 20 nutritional factors, including antioxidants, fatty acid composition, glycemic load, and many other nutrients. Often a food or meal will have a combination of pro- and anti-inflammatory factors of varying strengths, and the IF Rating is able to estimate the net effect of all these factors.
As you can see from the questions above, the IF Ratings often reveal some things that don’t line up with the conventional wisdom. Nonetheless, the ratings are based entirely on the actual nutritional composition of the foods and a little investigation always reveals an objective basis for “surprising” information.
The devil is in the (nutritional) details
In the case of whole grains, they do contain some anti-inflammatory nutrients, in particular zinc and folate. But they also contain a lot of carbohydrates, which tend to increase blood sugar, which tends to exacerbate inflammation. Likewise, the biggest contributor to the IF Rating of apples is the glycemic load, which, while not large, is still measurable. The net effect is a negative rating.
With salmon, it depends on what kind of salmon you’re talking about. Wild salmon is strongly anti-inflammatory, due in large part to its high levels of EPA and DHA, two strongly anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats. Farmed salmon, which is the majority of what is commercially sold, is also high in EPA and DHA. What most people don’t realize is that farmed salmon is also extremely high in arachidonic acid, which is the most inflammatory of the omega-6 fatty acids. This is because farmed salmon eat an artificial diet that is enriched with vegetable oils.
Not surprisingly, the difference in the diet makes a big difference in the nutritional composition of the fish. Like us, salmon are what they eat. So in farmed salmon, the anti-inflammatory benefits of the EPA and DHA are completely overwhelmed by the inflammatory capacity of the arachidonic acid. This is a critical distinction that is completely overlooked in most lists of “anti-inflammatory foods."
And finally, walnuts have a reputation for being anti-inflammatory because they are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. While this is true, what people often overlook is that walnuts are even higher in omega-6 fatty acids. Research shows that a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the diet promotes inflammation. While eating walnuts increases your intake of omega-3 fats, it increases your intake of omega-6 fats even faster. Although walnuts can be a great part of a healthy, anti-inflammatory diet, eating walnuts alone will not improve the omega-6/omega-3 ratio of your diet.
Foods with negative IF Ratings are not necessarily bad for you!
As I explain in my book, the goal is not necessary to avoid all negatively-rated foods but to bring the diet into balance. Many foods with slightly negative IF Ratings, such as apples, walnuts, and whole grains, are quite healthful. In fact, it would be impossible to build a balanced diet without including foods that have negative IF Ratings.
Keep in mind that inflammation is a healthy and necessary part of the human immune response; so it makes sense that a healthy diet would include factors that support the inflammatory response. The problem is an excessive inflammatory response, driven by an excess of foods that promote inflammatory pathways.
While I believe it's wise to limit or avoid foods that are strongly inflammatory, such as french fries or farmed salmon, there's no reason to avoid wholesome foods like fruits and grains. Just aim to have the sum of all foods eaten in a day to have a positive IF Rating, so that the overall effect of the diet is anti-inflammatory.
I hope that clears up some of the confusion! You'll find answers to more frequently asked questions about the IF Rating system on my author's blog on Amazon.com as well as the book's website Inflammation Factor.com.
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