ZOE Science & Nutrition - Most replayed moment: Three Foods to Fight Inflammation | Dr Federica Amati & Prof Tim Spector

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Today we’re talking about some foods that can change your life. Fatigue, disease, gut problems and weight gain. Many of the issues we discuss on this podcast can be linked back to one thing: chronic inflammation.  However, you don’t need drugs or detoxes to quell this fire. One of the most powerful tools we have to control inflammation is right in front of us: food. I’m joined by Dr. Federica Amati and Professor Tim Spector to spotlight three inflammation-fighting foods - and explain why these small changes to your plate can make a big difference to your body. 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily 30+ Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide

Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Fatigue, disease, gut problems, weight gain. Many of the issues that we discuss on this podcast can be linked back to one thing. Chronic inflammation. However, you don't need drugs or detoxes to quell this fire. One of the most powerful tools that we have to control inflammation is right in front of us. Food. I'm joined by Dr Federica Amati and Tim Specter to spotlight three inflammation fighting foods

and explain why these small changes to your plate can make a big difference to your body. Long-term inflammation is really bad. This is really important in terms of affecting your long-term health. The food that we eat is sort of central to whether or not that inflammation is always on or it's switched off? Yes, or degrees in between. So it's not necessarily on off switch. you can dial it down or dial out. So perhaps more like a thermostat that are on off switch.

So everyone has some level and the question is it on like super high, medium or really quite low, which is a good place to be in this modern world? Correct. And there are, you know, a lot of people with autoimmune diseases where the disease itself is causing the body to fight itself and they have raised inflammation levels. And anyone listening with an autoimmune disease know the consequence of that. They're getting the tiredness, the fatigue, you know, often have depression as well. They're stiff in the mornings. All these things that you get with

these classic levels of inflammation, you're getting to a much more reduced extent when you get to minor levels. But in a way, everyone is suffering to some extent. So everyone can improve whatever state of inflammation they have, even if they don't feel they're unwell. So let's start talking about some real actionable advice and talk about foods that can fight inflammation. I know you've brought seven foods that can fight inflammation, but I'd like to start with one that I asked her out right at the beginning, which is what about a detox juice cleanse? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. We see them advertised everywhere. I know quite a few people who do this as a way to, like, clean themselves after what they feel is poor living. Yeah. Thumbs up?

No. In some ways, it can help people feel better because they're just like giving their body a break. So typically after you've had maybe a holiday and you've drunk loads of alcohol and you've eaten loads of foods you wouldn't normally eat that aren't necessarily helpful. The issue here is that we're juicing, you're not actually feeding the gut microbes what they need to do this important role of maintaining a healthy, happy immune system and maintaining this dynamic switch of inflammation down. We need fibre. And when you juice something, you remove all the fibre.

Now, the seven foods we're bringing today, Jonathan, are part of a healthy diet. dietary pattern. So what we know, as Tim said, they're not superfoods, but they are nice examples of the types of foods that you should include in a diet pattern overall. So day after day, consistency is key. And a juice cleanse is never going to be consistent because no one can live on one and it doesn't offer everything you need. So it's not a good way to think about how to reduce your inflammation with diet. And it's also the misconception that the reason we have inflammation is we've got these toxins in our body that we just need to flush out of the system, like, you know, a bit of plumbing.

And this has been pervasive on social media for the last 10 years, really. But we have kidneys and liver that do a very good job. If you feed them well, if you drink your water, giving your immune system and giving your body overall what it needs to function optimally so that it can dampen down unnecessary chronic inflammation, but it can remain dynamic in case inflammation is needed because you cut yourself or because you get a viral infection. So I need to feed it the right thing.

It's not just about like flushing out the bad thing. I need to give it the right things to support me and be healthy. And then trust your liver and your kidneys to do their job in removing the toxins. So inflammation, as Tim said, is very active. So it does cause a lot of waste. And your liver and your kidneys will get rid of that waste product if you're just eating a good diet, sleeping well and drinking enough water. Brilliant.

So the juice cleanses out. Yes, it's out. Let's talk about foods. And Tim, let's start with a classic that even my daughter will eat broccoli. Why is it to stand out for fighting inflammation? Well, it's a great example. And I think it's, you know, it's one of the Brassica family, which includes all kinds of things like cabbages and leeks and onions and garlic and cauliflower. It's because it has anti-inflammatory properties that have been shown.

And one of the main chemicals, and this is just an example of one of many, but there's a really cool chemical there that gets released when you eat broccoli called sulfurophane. And this has all these effects on the body, these. anti-inflammatory effects on the body, and it's been shown to reduce obesity-related inflammation, when you give it to adolescence, it can reduce insulin levels as well, and you get even more effects when you look at broccoli sprouts. And this is a general rule, because the sprout comes out of the seed, and those first shoots have really concentration amounts of all these nutrients, particularly cellophones, and that gives them even more potential.

So the younger that shoot is, the more you're getting of this really cool chemical. Now, there are some problems with self-phoraphane, because if you just throw your broccoli into a pan, you'll actually inhibit the sulforophane from being released because the heat does this. So there's a little chemistry that needs to be going on here. So I've got a tip to overcome this. You something called chop and stop. This is the same for broccoli, and it's the same. Same for garlic and onions.

You just chop it up, which releases the sulfhorophane as you break down the cell walls, all leaks out. And rather than being instantly deactivated by the heat, you leave it for 10 minutes, have a cup of coffee or a sneaky glass of wine. And you can then put it in the pan and you're getting all the sulforaphane. The other tip is to maximize the sulforaphane is to actually microwave your broccoli. You get three or four times more sulfurophan when you microwave it than when you heat it. Most people think microwaving's really unhealthy, but actually in some cases it can be a real boon because it works differently. And this is a little bit of trickery. So what I've said for broccoli also goes for cauliflower, cabbage, onions, garlic.

And all those foods contain, you know, not just the sulforaphim, but many other good things that are really good for a gut and therefore our immune system. So that's a great. example of an anti-inflammatory food. I love it, Tim. You're making me feel much better about my poor parenting, which is like my daughter never gets broccoli anyway other than thrown in the microwave. And now I'm going to claim it's all in order

to give her way more of the, what was it called again? Sulforaphane. Sulforaphane. So brilliant. All right. FedE, next up, I think is olive oil. Oh, yes. But I understand, not just any type of olive oil. Yes, so you want extra virgin olive oil.

Extra virgin olive oil contains lots of polyphenol, so these really powerful chemicals that we know have a big impact both on our microbiome. So our gut microbes love these. They break them down and make more chemicals. And they have a direct effect in our bodies, especially on our vascular health, so inside our blood vessels. Extra virgin olive oil has comparable effects on inflammation, including pain, to ibuprofen. And the way it does this is because it inhibits something called Cox 2, which is one of the main pathways that causes inflammation. Drinking olive oil could have the same effect on reducing inflammation as taking ibuprofen. Exactly that. Yeah. So if you have it every day, you might have some arthritis or you might have an inflammatory condition or you might just be wanting to look after your immune system and your inflammation after this episode. Having extra virgin olive oil in your daily diet actually actively helps to dampen down that inflammation.

That is slightly mad. So it's like you can pop an Advil or you can. you could just pour olive oil over your food. And I know that Tim pours a lot of olive oil over his food. Yeah, I think we could probably compete on that. And I never take ad bill, so there you go. But the great thing about it is that there's the actual chemical that's involved in this Cox 2 inhibition, so this pathway is the same one that gives that peppery, slightly scratchy feeling to extra virgin olive oil.

So if you have a really fresh extra virgin olive oil, you take a sip or you smell it. You know you can almost feel it scratching the back of your throat. That's the polyphenol that you're. looking for. So the sharper the extra virgin olive oil, the more it's anti-inflammatory potential. And I think it's just so worth pointing out in your extra virgin olive oil can be expensive nowadays, Jonathan, but it's about the same price as a bottle of fairly cheap wine. If you're looking after your health, the best investment you can make is to include it in your diet and to just buy some, even if you're only dressing food with it, it's honestly such an amazing food.

Brilliant. Tim, the next one might surprise people who aren't listening to this show, all the time because it's dark chocolate. It's a treat. How can it possibly be reducing my inflammation? Well, again, it's not dissimilar to Fetri's extra virgin olive oil in that chocolate contains polyphenols, very high levels, if it's good quality chocolate. So we're not talking about the average Hershey's or Cadbury's that has really low levels.

We're talking ones that have over 70% of pure cocoa in there, and the rest is just made up of a little bit of sugar or very few other ingredients. So for chocolate that has few additives, just really cocoa mass, cocoa butter, a bit of sugar, then a couple of studies in real humans have shown that in people with kidney disease who have a lot of inflammation going on, they can really reduce their inflammation levels by taking these dark chocolate supplements for a couple of months and they reduced TNF levels. And another study did the same in, I think, are obese adolescents who, as Fethe explained,

obesity itself causes inflammation and they were able to give these chocolate for a couple of weeks plus an exercise plan. And those that took the chocolate and the exercise got this double whammy of the real big drop in in their CRP, which is the main marker of inflammation. So I think there's good evidence that chocolate, as well as being super tasty and good for your gut, has these direct anti-inflammatory effects, which is really cool. So can I now eat limitless amounts of dark chocolate because Tim tells me I'm fighting inflammation? I don't know the upper level, Jonathan.

I would suspect not. There must be a maximum level. We're talking people having two or three segments a day. and generally the stronger the chocolate, the harder is to eat too much of it. The more concentrated it is, the less sugar it is, the safer it is. So it's really the sugar that you're saying, I can't. So if it was just the chocolate, I can knock myself out. Correct.

It's very hard to overdo it on the 90% chocolate. 70% you're still getting a reasonable amount of sugar in there that you don't necessarily want to be eating bars and bars off. Yeah, and I think to Tim's point it's really hard to eat two bars of 90% dark chocolate. But it's exciting to hear how it can reduce inflammation, especially in people who have obesity, because reducing that inflammation is key to being able to lose fat. Because when those fat cells are in an inflammatory state, it's much harder for lipolisus for the fat to come out. So this mechanism is super exciting as a potential to help people who have excess fat actually lose some of that.

And the old studies used to link eating chocolate with reduced heart disease. For the habitat. And it could be that this is because it's actually reduced. the inflammation in the blood vessels rather than a direct effect on the heart. I'll end this episode with something I think you'll like, a free Zoe gut health guide. If you're a regular listener, you know just how important it is to take care of your gut. Your gut microbiome is the gateway to better health, better sleep, energy and mood. The list just goes on.

But many of us aren't sure how to best support our gut. I wasn't sure before doing Zoe. which is why we've developed an easy-to-follow gut health guide. It's completely free and offers five simple steps to improve your gut health. You'll get tips from Professor Tim Specter, Zoe's scientific co-founder and one of the world's most cited scientists, plus recipes and shopping lists straight to your inbox. We'll also send you ongoing gut health and nutrition insights, including how Zoe can help. To get your free Zoe gut health guide, head on over to zoey.com slash gut guide.

Thanks for tuning in and see you next time.