It really is confusing. My best answer is, you have to know yourself. I have rheumatoid arthritis and my level of inflammation on the Mediterranean diet (along with meds) is normal.But I eat nuts every day and also seem to have no issue with “nightshade” vegetables like tomato and eggplant. I guess it’s just trial and error. Fortunately I found a way of eating that works for me.
Nutrition textbooks, while bland & boring, are definitely the best source for the average person. Reading & interpreting scientific research studies is not feasible for most people, and blogs/social media is filled with fear mongering & misinformation.
In regards to inflammatory foods specifically: this is for some odd reason the “hot word” in the social media nutrition community. Unless you have a medical issue that requires minimal consumption of potentially inflammatory foods, it’s really not something that the average person should worry about.
I don’t have the exact answer that you are looking for because I honestly don’t feel like there is one.
I was a nutritionist (I stopped working in patient care to become a stay at home mom) and when my patients asked me this question my answer was always this:
Medicine, and therefore nutrition, is not linear. Every clinician is taught the same content, but what they practice is their interpretation of what they learned. There will always be conflicting information about anything related to the body because each human body is different, and so each theory should technically work for one person but maybe not another.
I have found that you shouldn’t be concerned about foods alone being “inflammatory”, but instead overall lifestyle factors. Focus on following the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations for nutritional balance. Meet your daily needs for fiber, water and omega 3 fatty acids. Make sure you get enough exercise every week (per the AHA recommendations). Reduce the stress in your life by practicing mindfulness and managing your mental health as needed. Get enough sleep every night. Reduce/abstain from alcohol consumption. Don’t smoke.
I think the easiest way to describe it is there’s inflammatory foods vs non-inflammatory foods compared to each other (ex; processed sugarcane vs. organic blueberries/carrots) which is more objective.
But then there’s also inflammatory vs non-inflammatory foods compared to YOUR body. Which is subjective.
Ex. If I don’t eat enough complex carbs/ gluten / black beans , I get really cold, even in the summer.
But your body might be celiac and unable to digest legumes.
Find out what works for you. Experiment with how different foods make you feel, and/or get an allergy/intolerance test done.
Begin by accepting that every person is different. Then, look at the original cultures you descend from, and what their traditional diets looked like. That’s a good starting point.
Tomatoes, like all solanaceae, have strong natural compounds. If you eat them every day, they may cause problems. Or maybe you are sensitive, for a number of possible reasons.
Like anything with nutrition, it depends from person to person. When I was eating a lot of pUF oils like canola oil and others my inflammatory markers were through the roof. I cut all of that shit out and it went down. Unfortunately, nutrition science is very good at correlation, but not causation or definitive answers because every person is different and you can’t do controlled RCT’s for 40 years to prove the epidemiology. The best thing to do is get your blood work and screenings done regularly and adjust your diet based off of that. My grandmother has kidney issues, so guess what? She can’t eat potassium-rich foods. No matter how healthy they are.
My (somewhat selfish) philosophy is don’t be the test subject. When looking at articles always look for wide statistical research focused on mortality\disease outcomes. Nutrition is something we keep learning about: fats we thought were bad might be good and vice versa, nightshades may have disadvantages, daily intake recommendations might be off for certain nutrients, and so on, it really has no end. You can try to implement the most current theory and either benefit or compromise your health, at this point in time there are many things you simply can’t know for sure. What we do know is that there are many traditional diets rich in tomatoes, or nuts for that matter, and we can compare the average outcome these have on the people consuming them. I wouldn’t eliminate anything that’s widely consumed in a healthy culture, neither would I eat a lot more than the typically consumed amount. Tomatoes and nuts are good in moderation unless your body tells you otherwise basically.
Good sources are hard to find, especially in biological science where the information can sometimes be contradictory depending on research methods and individual variation. With that being said, one of the better places to search if you want the most recent/rigorous info is in peer-reviewed academic journals (try scholar.google.com).
In the instance of almonds, a recent review and meta-analysis published on behalf of the American Society of Nutrition shows that some biomarkers of inflammation, C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, are present at decreased levels in people who eat almonds compared to those who do not. These are important biomarkers that are highly correlated with clinical outcomes that we care about, such as diabetes, heart disease, etc. Other inflammatory biomarkers such as TNF-a, however, showed no significant change. All in all, it’s probably more anti-inflammatory than pro-inflammatory. They’re also delightfully crunchy, I like them in candy-free trail mix. As others have said, it is more important to think holistically than get hung up on one food.
Citation: Azadbakht, 2021. “The effects of almond consumption on inflammatory biomarkers in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.” I also do research on inflammatory biomarkers.