Straight from the cookbook this app is built on, "Become an Ingredient Reader" and "What's Really In Your Food." Plain language, no chemistry degree required.
If you've personally confirmed you tolerate something on this list (a specific tomato color, a specific grain), add it as a personal exception on your own Protocol. This baseline is the starting point, not a lock.
The most common offenders, explained in plain language: what they are, where they hide, and why they matter for inflammation.
Preservatives used to keep meat pink and stop bacterial growth. When they hit high heat, like a hot skillet, or mix with stomach acid, they can convert into compounds called nitrosamines. Your immune system treats these as intruders, triggering the same inflammatory "on alert" reaction it uses to fight off infection, except now it's happening every time you eat a hot dog.
Not the natural phosphorus in eggs or fish, this is added phosphate, and it's absorbed by your body far more easily. In excess, it throws off your calcium-phosphate balance, which stresses blood vessels and bone. That stress reads to your body as low-grade injury, and low-grade injury means low-grade, constant inflammation.
These stop mold and bacteria from growing on shelf-stable foods. Harmless in tiny amounts, but they're gut irritants at regular exposure, and since most of your immune system lives in your gut lining, irritating that lining keeps stirring up inflammatory cells.
Petroleum-derived colorants. Your body doesn't recognize them as food, so it flags them as foreign material and mounts a mild immune, or inflammatory, response every time they pass through.
Liquid oils turned solid through a chemical process. Your cell membranes are built partly from the fat you eat, so an artificial, "bent" fat means your cells build themselves slightly wrong. Malformed cell walls are leaky and irritated, a direct on-ramp to chronic inflammation.
A petroleum-based preservative used to keep oils from going rancid. Animal studies have linked high doses to immune system disruption, a shelf-life extender whose chemical fight against decay doesn't stop once it's inside you.
Thickeners derived from seaweed or plant fiber. In lab and animal studies, carrageenan specifically has been shown to irritate the gut lining and trigger inflammatory markers, even though it's "natural." Natural doesn't always mean gut-friendly.
Flow agents added to keep things from clumping. A spice jar's ingredient list should say one thing, the name of the spice. The moment a second ingredient shows up, that's worth a second look.
Petroleum-derived preservatives, avoided by choosing products with shorter, whole-food ingredient lists.