You don’t need ten food swaps to eat in a way that helps calm inflammation, because three easy ones do most of the work. Cook with extra virgin olive oil instead of margarine or shortening, sip water, sparkling water or green tea in place of soda and sweet tea, and enjoy fatty fish like salmon, sardines or mackerel twice a week instead of a deli-meat or red-meat meal. Those three touch a big share of what you eat in a week, and they have the most steady research behind them. Once they feel natural, whole grains and roasting instead of frying are great next steps.
Three swaps that do the heavy lifting
Think of this as the grocery-list version, and if you’d like the science behind it, our guide to anti-inflammatory foods goes deeper.
Start with your cooking oil, since you reach for it every day without even thinking about it. Margarine, shortening and the blended oil by the stove are fine for cooking, but extra virgin olive oil brings more to the table. It has a natural compound that helps calm inflammation in lab studies, and its kind of fat has held up well across decades of Mediterranean-diet research. The swap takes no effort at all, because it’s the same pan and the same amount with just a different bottle. Pick a size you can finish in a couple of months, since the good compounds slowly break down once it’s open and sitting in the light. A smooth, fruity one like Atlas Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil slips right into everything you already cook.
Next, look at what you drink. Sweet drinks are something many of us have every single day, which makes them one of the easiest places to make a change that counts. Soda, sweet tea, energy drinks and a sugary coffee order are mostly sugar with no fiber to slow it down, and research links having them often with higher signs of inflammation. Plain water is great, but sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon or lime is the one that tends to stick, and green tea is a nice step up because it brings a little good of its own.
Third, add fish instead of focusing on cutting meat. “Eat less red meat” can feel like a rule you’ll drop by Thursday, while “have salmon or sardines twice a week” is something you can actually picture on your plate. The omega-3 fats in fish help keep the body’s inflammation in check, and studies that raise omega-3 intake tend to show better inflammation markers. Canned salmon and sardines totally count, and they cost less than a fresh fillet. Ready-to-eat salmon like Safe Catch Wild Pink Salmon keeps in the pantry, too, which helps on busy weeks when fresh fish isn’t happening.
Next-step swaps that build over time
Swapping refined carbs for whole grains is a good change that works more slowly. White bread, pastries and many cereals digest fast and can swing your blood sugar around, while oats, farro, brown rice and whole-grain bread digest more slowly and feed the gut bacteria that help calm inflammation. That gut connection is the part we love most, and our pieces on fiber and prebiotics explain it. A quick tip for the store is that “whole grain” on the front of a box doesn’t always mean much, so look for a whole grain listed first in the ingredients and about three grams of fiber per serving, or just make hearty rolled oats like Quaker Old Fashioned Rolled Oats your go-to breakfast.
Eating less processed meat has some of the strongest research behind it of any swap here, and health agencies have flagged it as a food to keep to an occasional treat. Bacon, salami, hot dogs and deli meat are the ones to cut back on, not steak. If you swap in roast chicken, eggs, lentils or canned beans, you skip the preservatives and pick up some fiber along the way. This is about how often, not never, so bacon on a Sunday morning is perfectly fine, and the swap that helps is moving away from deli meat in your sandwich five days a week.
Moving from fried to roasted is a swap that’s easy to love once you understand it. The issue is what high, dry heat used over and over does to food, since it creates compounds linked to stress on your cells. Roasting, grilling with a marinade, air-frying and braising all make fewer of them than a fryer that reuses the same oil all week, and crispy roasted potatoes hardly feel like a sacrifice. When you want something crunchy in place of chips, Planters Deluxe Unsalted Mixed Nuts bring healthy fats, fiber and protein with no salt added. Cooking at home more often fits here too, mostly because you get to control the seasoning. Garlic, ginger, turmeric and rosemary bring their own plant compounds and add so much flavor that you’ll reach for the salt less.
Popular swaps you can skip
Switching from dairy milk to plant milk shows up on a lot of these lists, but for most of us dairy isn’t a problem. Research leans neutral to slightly positive, and fermented dairy like yogurt tends to look good. If you’re lactose intolerant or dairy just doesn’t agree with you, that’s reason enough to skip it, and plant milks are a tasty choice. For everyone else, the dairy swap that really helps is going from sweetened flavored yogurt to plain yogurt, where you add your own fruit and control the sugar. A thick, high-protein plain yogurt like 365 Plain Greek Yogurt stands in for sour cream too, and a spoonful of nicely bitter 365 Organic Cocoa Powder stirred in gives chocolate lovers that flavor without the added sugar.
Trading sweeteners for honey or maple syrup is another one to rethink. There’s some early research suggesting certain sweeteners may change gut bacteria, and scientists are still looking into it, but honey and maple syrup are still sugar, so the switch doesn’t buy you much. If diet soda helps you skip regular soda, that’s a fine place to be, since the goal is less sweetness overall rather than a fancier source of it.
The idea that a glass of red wine is good for you has also faded as studies got better. You’d need far more wine than anyone should drink to match the amounts used in the research, and the case for moderate drinking being protective has gotten weaker over time. If you enjoy a glass of wine, go ahead and enjoy it, just don’t drink it for your health, and don’t let a list like this talk you into starting.
Where to start this week
Your cooking oil is the easiest place to begin. It’s one purchase, it takes no willpower and it touches nearly everything you cook.
If you have soda or a sweetened coffee every day, that’s your best swap of all, even ahead of the oil. How often you have something matters more than how much is in one serving, and nothing else on this list reaches you that often.
If you’re not a fish person, there’s no need to force down salmon fillets. Canned salmon mashed with yogurt and lemon, or sardines on toast with a drizzle of olive oil, gets you the same omega-3s in a milder way.
If you already eat pretty well, move on to the next-step swaps by choosing true whole grains, roasting instead of frying and cooking at home enough that you control the salt.
If you have an autoimmune condition or IBD, or you’re managing your blood sugar, think of this as background reading and bring your questions to your doctor or a registered dietitian. Some foods can affect treatment plans, and a general list can’t account for yours, so one visit with a dietitian can do more for you than any article.
There’s more like this in our wellness section.
