An anti-inflammatory diet means cutting back on foods that raise your body’s levels of inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). The biggest offenders are added sugars, refined carbohydrates, processed meats, certain fats, and ultra-processed packaged foods. Here’s what to skip and why each category matters.
Added Sugars and Sweetened Drinks
Sugar is one of the most consistent drivers of inflammation in the modern diet. Current dietary guidelines recommend no more than 10 grams of added sugar per meal for adults, and dairy snacks like yogurt should stay under 2.5 grams per serving. That’s a low ceiling, and most packaged foods blow past it.
The problem with sugar isn’t just calories. When you consume a lot of added sugar, your blood sugar spikes rapidly, and your body mounts an inflammatory response to deal with it. Over time, repeated spikes keep inflammation elevated at a low, chronic level. Soda, bottled teas, sports drinks, candy, syrups, and jellies are the most obvious sources, but sugar hides in condiments, granola bars, flavored oatmeal, and salad dressings too. Check nutrition labels for added sugars specifically, since naturally occurring sugars in whole fruit behave differently in your body because of the fiber that comes with them.
Refined Carbohydrates and White Flour
White bread, regular pasta, and most commercial baked goods (snack cakes, cookies, pies, brownies) are made from refined flour that’s been stripped of fiber, fat, and protein. Without those components to slow digestion, refined carbs spike your blood sugar almost as fast as eating dessert. That rapid spike triggers the same pro-inflammatory cascade as added sugar.
Swapping to whole grain versions makes a measurable difference. A large meta-analysis of 2,300 people across 17 clinical trials found that greater adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet, which emphasizes whole grains over refined ones, was associated with significant reductions in both CRP and IL-6. You don’t need to go grain-free. You just need grains that still have their fiber intact.
Processed and Red Meat
Processed meats like bacon, sausage, hot dogs, bologna, and deli meats (including deli turkey and chicken) consistently show up as pro-inflammatory in research. These products often contain added nitrates and nitrites, which are used to prevent bacterial growth and give the meat its pink or red color. In your stomach’s acidic environment, nitrites interact with compounds concentrated in meat to form N-nitroso compounds, which are not only inflammatory but also potential carcinogens.
Red meat like steak and hamburgers is also on the avoid list, though the evidence is stronger against processed varieties. The combination of saturated fat, compounds generated during high-heat cooking, and the preservatives in processed meat creates a particularly inflammatory package. If you eat red meat, keeping it occasional and unprocessed is a reasonable middle ground.
Trans Fats and Excess Saturated Fat
Trans fats are the clearest dietary villain when it comes to inflammation. They’re found in some margarines, microwave popcorn, refrigerated biscuit dough, nondairy coffee creamers, and deep-fried foods like French fries, fried chicken, and donuts. Although many manufacturers have reduced trans fats in recent years, they still appear in products that list “partially hydrogenated oil” in the ingredients.
Saturated fats deserve attention too, though the picture is more nuanced. At the cellular level, saturated fatty acids activate immune receptors on fat cells and immune cells, switching on inflammatory gene expression. This doesn’t mean you need to eliminate every source of saturated fat, but a diet heavy in butter, full-fat cheese, and fatty cuts of meat will push your inflammatory markers upward. Replacing some saturated fat with olive oil, nuts, or fatty fish shifts the balance toward anti-inflammatory fats.
Vegetable Oils High in Omega-6
Your body needs both omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, but the ratio matters. Research suggests the body maintains optimal health at a ratio of about 5:1 (omega-6 to omega-3). The typical Western diet sits closer to 20:1, heavily tilted toward omega-6. That imbalance promotes a pro-inflammatory state.
The main culprits are cooking oils used in large quantities: soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, and safflower oil. These are also the dominant oils in restaurant cooking, fast food, and packaged snacks. You don’t need to ban them entirely, but reducing how often you cook with them and choosing olive oil, avocado oil, or small amounts of butter instead will help correct the ratio. Eating more omega-3 sources (salmon, sardines, walnuts, flaxseed) pulls the ratio in the right direction from the other side.
Ultra-Processed Packaged Foods
Beyond any single ingredient, the overall level of processing in your diet predicts inflammation. A study published in Frontiers in Nutrition found that higher ultra-processed food intake was associated with a 5.4% increase in CRP concentration. That’s a modest bump from a single statistical measure, but ultra-processed foods tend to combine multiple inflammatory ingredients at once: refined flour, added sugar, unhealthy fats, and synthetic additives.
Some of those additives deserve special attention. Emulsifiers like polysorbate-80, commonly added to ice cream, salad dressings, and shelf-stable sauces to improve texture, have been shown to disrupt the gut’s protective mucus layer, alter the microbiome, and promote inflammation in animal studies. Research published in the BMJ journal Gut found that emulsifier metabolites increased gut permeability, essentially making the intestinal lining leakier. When that barrier is compromised, other compounds (including artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin) can cross into circulation more easily. In people with inflammatory bowel conditions, higher levels of these sweeteners in stool and urine correlated with more active disease.
The practical takeaway: foods with long ingredient lists full of unfamiliar additives are worth replacing with simpler alternatives. Plain yogurt instead of flavored. Whole nuts instead of flavored snack mixes. Home-cooked meals where you control what goes in.
Alcohol Beyond Light to Moderate Amounts
Alcohol has a J-shaped relationship with inflammation, meaning the lowest inflammatory markers don’t belong to people who abstain completely. A study in Circulation found that people who drank one to seven drinks per week had a 15% probability of elevated IL-6 and CRP levels, compared to 20% for non-drinkers and roughly 27 to 28% for those consuming eight or more drinks per week. The inflammation risk climbs steeply once you pass that seven-drinks-per-week threshold.
If you drink, keeping it to about one drink per day or fewer aligns with the lowest inflammation levels. If you don’t drink, this data isn’t a reason to start, since the difference between non-drinkers and light drinkers is small. Heavy or binge drinking, on the other hand, is clearly pro-inflammatory.
Nightshades: Skip the Worry for Most People
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes belong to the nightshade family, and some anti-inflammatory diet plans recommend avoiding them. The evidence doesn’t support this for most people. No large-scale studies have demonstrated that nightshades cause inflammation, and they contain beneficial nutrients and antioxidants.
The exception may be people who already have an autoimmune or inflammatory condition like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, or inflammatory bowel disease. Some individuals in these groups report feeling better when they reduce nightshades. If nightshades seem to trigger symptoms for you, it may signal an underlying imbalance that’s keeping chronic inflammation simmering, with nightshades adding fuel. But for the general population, there’s no reason to eliminate an otherwise nutritious group of vegetables.