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If inflammation is bad, and saturated fats are good-then why according to nutrition data.com are saturated fats like butter and coconut oil "highly inflammatory" and yet paleo dogma says they're good and anti-inflammatory?

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 That site also says that food high in cholesterol is bad for you. They are a widely used public site that is not going to contradict 'conventional wisdom' or the current nutritional paradigm. In other words, they will favor low fat, healthy whole grains, legumes, etc. – Dave S. Jul 16 at 15:52
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 Please do not make things up to prove a point. It makes you look silly. The site is not biased towards low fat, grains, or legumes. On the contrary, chicken breast, wheat, corn, oats, and some legumes all have high inflammatory scores. However, beef, salmon/fatty fish, fruits, vegetables, and most nuts have ANTI-inflammatory scores. If anythings, it is biased towards paleo (but not primal). – alligator Jul 16 at 16:04
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 "Butter, without salt. The bad: This food is very high in Saturated Fat." Not biased towards low fat, you say? Moreover, the inflammation scores come from the site inflammationfactor, which states "there’s no reason to avoid wholesome foods like fruits and grains". I would hardly call this biased towards paleo. – vraid Jul 16 at 16:51
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 The algorithm that nutrition data figures saturated fat as inflammatory. That does not actually mean that it is inflammatory. It's quite likely that their data is based on lumping processed saturated fats (transfats) in with naturally occurring and untampered with saturated fats. – Karen Jul 16 at 18:00
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 Seems like a perfectly reasonable question. Why all the bad karma? – eddieosh Jul 17 at 2:50
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11 Answers

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Maybe I'm just being kind of a dick, but if you're going to slam every reasonable/logical answer given. Why did you bother asking the question? Did you just make this topic so you can argue with a bunch of people on the internet? Obviously there's no 100% clear cut answer yet on this topic. Otherwise it wouldn't even be debatable. Nutritiondata.com definitely has what seems to be a reputable sounding name. No question. I can go to an appalling number of websites with reputable sounding names that claim facts on their topic that are nothing more than backed up than by some dude behind a keyboard. Not everything on the internet is true. Even the "facts" we all agree on today aren't always true tomorrow (ie. the world is flat). Otherwise I could lose 9lbs by this afternoon on a crash diet and have sex with at least 30,000 super hot single chicks living in my town alone, all while having my debt cleared away and I'd be leaving on my free vacation by the week's end.

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 no, no, no, we're supposed to come up with an answer that alligator likes. Don't you know ANYTHING??? ;-) – Sunshine Jul 16 at 20:09
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 alligator is definitely trolling... – MathGirl72 Jul 16 at 21:12
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 Perhaps eat as much as you need rather than as much as you want. These are not always the same thing :) – Matt Jul 16 at 23:39
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 Lastly, I would speculate that if you compared to how "inflammatory" saturated fat is compared to eating a comparable amount of wheat that the saturated fatty meat would look more like a small wave on the graph and the wheat would look like a mountain. – Derek Jul 16 at 23:44
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 That was my thought, Karen, thus my trolling comment. – MathGirl72 Jul 17 at 12:52
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First off, not all inflammation is bad, your body requires it. What is bad is systemic low chronic inflammation. Secondly, not all fats are good. And just calling "saturated fats" inflammatory is not quite accurate. There are different breakdowns of saturated fats, some are and some aren't.

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Yes, but apparently butter and coconut oil (two primal favorites), are inflammatory. – alligator Jul 16 at 15:21
... It would reason that if either of those are making up the majority of your calories, you'd be setting up an unfavorable internal environment chronically. – alligator Jul 16 at 15:23
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 True...butter and coconut oil should not make up the majority of your calories. – RaiseFitness Jul 16 at 16:20
Really? Huh. Darn. – Satchmo Oct 22 at 4:48
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The Paleo Diet doesn't recommend eating excess coconut oil. It just serves its purpose for cooking better than other oils. It does not go rancid when cooked over high head. Most ignorant Americans cook with olive oil -- what they don't know is olive oil goes rancid above 350*, creating free radicals.

Don't be afraid of fat, but don't go crazy with it either...

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Agree. But most primal's follow the advice of Sisson and Taubes and Jamiet, who say you can eat as much saturated fat as you want. – alligator Jul 16 at 15:45
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 Go eat as much seed oils, and see what happens to your inflammation. – RaiseFitness Jul 16 at 16:22
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 There's no magic number over which an oil oxidizes. Olive oil is fine to cook with. – Matt Jul 16 at 16:33
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 I'm fed up with the don't cook with olive oil crowd. I understand that it smokes easily but there are a LOT of people who cook with it seemingly without problems. I don't think it's a huge problem compared to people just eating proper amounts of food and being more active. Olive oil heating is a mere detail – ben61820 Jul 16 at 18:28
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 You have to eat fats. If you stop eating fat you will die. Some fats are anti-inflammatory, some are pro. Some oxidize worse, some don't. I would not recommend getting rid of butter and saturated fats and replacing it with olive oil on everything. People on here might want too, but not I. I also understand the importance if dietary cholesterol on building muscle and hormones. Most foods that contain cholesterol contain saturated fats. – RaiseFitness Jul 16 at 19:53
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What does this term 'highly inflammatory' mean? We know and understand the inflammatory potential of Omega-6, for instance, because of the role they play with the prostaglandins.
What is the mechanism by which butter and coconut oil contributes to inflammation?

And, of course, I am walking around in a body has responded very favorably to butter, ghee, and saturated fat in general, though not coconut oil because I seem to be allergic to one of the transporter proteins.

To go further, properly speaking, the paleo 'dogmatists', if there are any, would be researchers like Eaton, and Cordain. I don't think they recommend butter at all, and I recently heard Eaton recommend staying away from red meat, favoring meat sources that had less saturated fat in it. You are hearing ardent, pro-saturated fat from the people who aren't dogmatists but pracitioners- i.e. we have tried it and it is good. If you are really going to throw around religious terms us ardently pro-saturated fat types are probably better termed paleo-heretics.

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In addition to the other good answers here, I also want to add that most of the agencies giving advice don't actually know what saturated fat is. That is, they know the definition, but they don't know real world examples. They'll point to a burger and fries and say that it is full of saturated fat and will kill you. But most of what would be in a typical burger is vegetable oil and carbs. So when "they" say that saturated fat is bad, they actually aren't pointing to saturated fat.

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 India. It is where ghee comes from. – August Jul 16 at 17:47
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 There's one. One. Butter is not inherently unhealthy but that doesn't mean that there's many healthy populations who consume a lot of it. Too many in this site castigate epidemiology then go on to use the same reasoning in supporting their chosen beliefs. – ben61820 Jul 16 at 18:24
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 Mark Sisson has a biology degree, not that having an english degree precludes you from offering sound health advice. – Mscott Jul 16 at 19:01
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 @alligator...if you don't like butter, then don't eat it. I eat it quite a bit and will put my health against practically everyone on this board. There is NO perfect food. You limit the bad, enjoy what you eat, and you will be fine. – RaiseFitness Jul 16 at 19:46
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 alligator = razwell? – Anondson Jul 17 at 3:09
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That site is wack. It also says blueberries are "mildy inflammatory". I would not use it to determine which foods are inflammatory.

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 Yeah, their algorithm is faulty. They do count sugars as inflammatory but can't factor in the other things that make blueberries anti-inflammatory. They're using a very incomplete formula. – Karen Jul 16 at 18:06
Given that they contain sugar it seems reasonable that they could be mildly inflammatory. We are putting foreign substances into our body, expect ever cell in our body to applaud seems unreasonable. – Satchmo Jul 16 at 23:16
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 Alright, while I don't have a study to support this, I highly doubt eating blueberries will promote inflammation regardless of the sugar. And I would hardly consider anything in blueberries "foreign". – Mscott Jul 16 at 23:38
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There is one problem with nutritiondata.com:

There are no references.

How am I supposed to know if what they claim there is on the level? If you are going to claim that something is inflammatory, then back it up. Coconut milk is inflammatory? According to whom?

In fact -- that's a great idea! while we're here, let's take a look at where this information comes from.

clicks link

Hmnn...

The IF Rating™ System

Monica Reinagel, a noted nutritional researcher, is the creator of the IF (Inflammation Factor) Rating™ system. Before creating her system, she spent years studying systemic inflammation, and compiled data from hundreds of different research studies. Her system considers the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects of more than 20 separate nutrients. In Nutrition Data's opinion, this rating system is the most sophisticated approach to date for predicting the inflammatory effects of foods.

Early in 2006, Monica authored the book The Inflammation Free Diet Plan, which provides simple guidelines for using her system to plan your diet, and includes IF Ratings for 1,500 common foods. Nutrition Data recommends this book to anyone considering using the advice of the IF Rating™ system. You can also learn more by visiting InflammationFactor.com.

The first warning sign is language like this:

"Monica Reinagel, a noted nutritional researcher..."

If you have to tell people you're notable, you aren't. (The moment I read something along the lines of "...has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, [insert cable channel desperate to fill airtime here]", I move on.)

"Before creating her system, she spent years studying systemic inflammation, and compiled data from hundreds of different research studies."

Hundreds and hundreds, for years... and years and years. Maybe two? Maybe ten? In a lab, or in the den?

It gets better:

"Her system considers the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects of more than 20 separate nutrients. In Nutrition Data's opinion, this rating system is the most sophisticated approach to date for predicting the inflammatory effects of foods."

Right, thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to add Nutrition Data to my list of journals to read.

"Early in 2006, Monica authored the book The Inflammation Free Diet Plan, which provides simple guidelines for using her system to plan your diet, and includes IF Ratings for 1,500 common foods. Nutrition Data recommends this book to anyone considering using the advice of the IF Rating™ system. You can also learn more by visiting InflammationFactor.com."

Houston, the Benjamin has landed! Nice work, Ms. Reinagel!

I have found that asking a lot of questions in general is useful in life. It saves me time and money.

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So many things wrong with your response. First you say there are no references, and then you go on to site M Reinegal. Who do you think she is? That is their reference. Also, if you know nothing about nutrition, it would be important to say that she's notable if she has published books and journals, and has appeared on national television. It's not Joe Dirt researching out of his trailer home btu some one with real credentials. You ask questions, but then you look no further- you have not gone to read any of her work, you are going by a summary of the person they are references. – alligator Jul 16 at 18:12
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 @stephen....thanks for pointing that out. I am sure she sold a lot of books. I thought the point of eating paleo was to eat natural foods our bodies were designed to eat. I didn't know everyday would be a matter of measuring macronutrients. micronutriens, vitamins, minerals, and now how inflammatory my food is. Its just too much. – RaiseFitness Jul 16 at 19:50
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 @alligator - That isn't a reference to data, it's name dropping. References would show the data so it could be reviewed and critiqued. Because X says so is an argument from authority. It's saying she is right because she is who she is, not because the data supports her findings. – Satchmo Jul 16 at 23:18
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 Also, a quick google shows she has a Masters in Nutrition science but has never published or taken part in a study. Her "publishing" were pop-diet books, not research papers or journal articles. – Satchmo Jul 16 at 23:22
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 Data such that she cites should all be triangulated and not taken as "truth." Nutritiondata.self.com does have some uses, e.g. nutritional breakdown of a recipe (I haven't foud anything else similar), but the information as to what is inflammatory/anti-inflammatory is at best subjective. Their information is based on the USDA's current guidelines, which I most of us here would agree is total hogwash. – MathGirl72 Jul 17 at 2:27
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How to game the nutritiondata.com system.

  • Manufacture a whole wheat breakfast cereal.
  • Load it up with vitamins A, C & E
  • Don't worry about the gluten, because that apparently isn't in the algorithm
  • Don't worry about other factors, because ND's algorithm weights the anti-inflammatory properties of the artificially added, probably not absorbable vitamins very highly.
  • Enjoy the anti-inflammatory status of the manufactured garbage you're selling.

Bonus: The breakfast cereal you sell will rank really, really well on the ND Nutritional Target Map too.

Remember with glee that computers aren't actually smart.

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 And don't put any blueberries on the cereal, that will make it less anti-inflammatory =P – Mscott Jul 16 at 22:03
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 Or better yet, put in fake blueberries in your crap-in-a-box product that sells for $12 a box, then advertise it as containing blueberries and mention how healthy those are. The cereal winds up costing less than the box it came in to manufacture. Yes, that's right, such garbage as fake blueberries exists and it's made of sugar and artificial coloring, with artificial flavor, not actual blueberries. – raydawg Jul 17 at 15:27
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For what it's worth, coconut oil makes my rheumatoid arthritis flare up like crazy.

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So, go eat a PB and J whole wheat sandwich. According to MD it has a mildly anti-inflammatory score. You cannot judge food just by it's inflammatory factor

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Doesn't the existing condition of the person eating the various fats matter, for example someone who is in ketosis or someone not in ketosis who regularly eats a high carb diet in a hot climate? What about an obese, leptin, and insulin resistant person? If someone's hormones are completely wack, wouldn't that affect short term results? What about the notion that ketones made from fat are less oxidative to mitochondria than glucose?

Are seed oils all the same? Lots of seed oils are extremely high in polyunsaturates which can promote inflammation. Macadamia, Avocado oil which is NOT a seed oil, and arguably, sweet almond and high oleic sunflower/safflower oils are not brimming with inflammatory polyunsaturates. Grassfed cow butter contains menatetrenone, A, E, D, B's, folate, carotenoids, butyrate and other health promoting factors which may confound inflammation. Coconut oil is hailed by most as being metabolized for quick energy instead of padding adipose tissue.

I know I have seen abstracts/articles which say proper high fat diets which can include saturated fats contribute to lower triglyceride levels. Livestrong says that in starvation mode, which I think of as ketosis, LDL is metabolized as an energy source.

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