Anti-inflammatory diet: what to put on your plate every day.

Anyone looking up an anti-inflammatory diet usually has something specific in mind: a body that feels heavy on waking, a shoulder that pulls, a bloated belly after lunch, the Saturday run you're still paying for on Wednesday.

One at a time they're small niggles. Together they can be the sign of a low, constant inflammation that brings no fever and makes no noise. I see it a lot in the managers I work with, and you tackle it with ordinary supermarket food.

What is an anti-inflammatory diet?

It's a way of eating that helps calm chronic inflammation, the body's slow burn. It's built on fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, pulses, olive oil and spices, and leaves out sugar, processed food, grains and dairy.

• Flat energy. You sleep, yet you wake up feeling heavy.
• Aches that move around. Your neck today, a knee tomorrow, with no knock to blame.
• Slow recovery. After a workout it takes you days to feel right again.

What fuels it and what calms it

Every meal sparks a little inflammation for a few hours, and the plate decides how much. After a sugar load, the markers stay high for at least three hours, while the same calories from protein, fruit and fibre spark less. Bread, pasta and rice, wholegrain included, can irritate the gut and leave you bloated, and many adults digest dairy poorly.

Then there are the fats. Soya, corn and peanut oils, common in fried and packaged food, carry plenty of omega-6. Oily fish brings omega-3, which pulls the other way. We used to eat them in roughly equal amounts; today the imbalance is more than ten to one. And ultra-processed food adds emulsifiers and sweeteners that can upset your gut flora.

The anti-inflammatory sample day

A savoury breakfast. Eggs with vegetables and a handful of nuts. The first number stamped on an egg tells you how the hen lives. Pick 0, organic, or 1, free range. Barn eggs, code 2, sound fine but carry more pro-inflammatory fats and no omega-3.

Lunch at 12.30, even at your desk. Plenty of vegetables first, then oily fish or pulses, olive oil used raw and a piece of fruit. Mackerel, sardines, anchovies and herring, several times a week.

A light supper around 7pm, three hours before bed. Steamed or oven-baked fish, broccoli or cabbage tossed with garlic and onion, pulses. Cook low and slow: a fierce grill, frying and barbecues create oxidised compounds.

Thirty plants a week. Vegetables, fruit, pulses, nuts, herbs and spices all count, and the variety feeds your gut flora. Turmeric in cooking, garlic, onion and a mid-morning green tea bring polyphenols, which can help calm inflammation. Fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi can, early on, lower the markers of inflammation even more than fibre alone.

Sleep and movement are on the menu too. One week on six hours a night alters more than seven hundred genes and switches on those tied to inflammation. Short sleep also tends to send you after sweet things. Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep, 7-8,000 steps and two strength sessions a week.

The mistake almost everyone makes. Buying the miracle food, turmeric in everything or the green juice, and leaving packaged food, fried food and short nights as they were.

Start with tomorrow's breakfast and the eggs you buy this week. After a few weeks of the sample day, notice how you wake up.