Generally speaking, there are two ways of thinking about arthritis diet and its possible effect on arthritis: one the one hand there are those people whose conviction it is that the food you eat does not have any influence whatsoever on the disease. On the other hand there are many people who firmly believe that what you eat has a great effect on your body and your soul.

A Healthy Diet Affects Your Overall Health

This little heading here above is a concept that is universally embraced. It follows then that food has a great deal of impact on our day-to day lives. Thinking a step further it is not all that hard to see the affiliation between food and the much feared affliction named arthritis. Those who advocate to the second school of thought dispense the following recommendations:

- Avoid all red meats, dairy products and even fruits. That does not really leave much now does it? And from a medical point of view there is no research that shows that a dramatic cut in proteins would be beneficial. On the other hand removing meat from the diet could be helpful. Common sense dictates however that removing dairy products and fruits all together is not the right arthritis diet.

- Integrate the nightshade vegetable into your diet. The nightshade is a low-calorie vegetable that is filled with nutrients. Consumption of this vegetable seems to be a beneficial addition to a healthy arthritis diet.

- Avoid frozen foods at all cost. Instead cook only enough quantities that will last you for only one day. Avoid prepared meals form the deep freezer at all times. This sounds like sound advice: test have shown that the fact of deep freezing makes the food lose about 50 percent of its nutrients

- Eat small portions of food, but do this many times a day. This is preferable to eating three big meals a day. It is said that many diseases will melt away as snow, when you change your eating habits. Eating only small quantities at a time will help with the digestion and assimilation of the nutrients. The system can cope easily with such small portions.

- Stay away from fat in your diet. Most animal fats contain the saturated fats which are the bad kind of fats and which actually can worsen any existing inflammation. A decision to remove animal fat all together from an arthritis diet seems to make sense in this regard.

Reading through these statements one can clearly see a pattern emerging. In my opinion food can indeed have some influences on health in general and arthritis in particular. But even with an arthritis diet that has all the T's crossed, we have to stay realistic and conclude that any arthritis diet will not make a tremendous change.