Dear FF,
You are right. Without explaining why you are wrong, we are no better than the FDA or any authoritarian source who offers no rationale.
To begin with, inflammation is not a "symptom." Inflammation is a process, the result of the inflammatory system. Inflammation may have symptoms, classically, swelling, heat, redness, and pain. Inflammation may also be asymptomatic which is the case for most chronic degenerative disease including atherosclerosis.
The derivation of the term inflammation is actually closer to "in flame", or "on fire". Now where I believe you get off the tracks is you are convinced that the cause which triggers inflammation is the perpetrator of the damage. Consider a forest fire. If lightning, or a match, starts a forest fire, that does not mean that lightning or the match burned down all the trees. No, it was the fire that did the damage. Inflammation is the fire.
As in the example of a forest fire, the likely hood the lightning bolt will result in a forest fire depends on other factors, how dry the weather has been, winds, and even the oxygen content in the atmosphere.
In the same sense there are factors that influence the effects of inflammation in our bodies. The inflammatory system is not set at one level for all time. The inflammatory system can be set to different levels of sensitivity like a thermostat. If the sensitivity is set too high, then the inflammatory system can become an enemy, attacking our own tissues. The inflammatory system possesses the chemicals and the soldiers (leukocytes, macrophages, dendrocytes) to destroy any tissue in our body, or to trigger processes like platelet aggregation, that can shut off vital circulation.
Atherosclerotic CVD is an inflammatory disease, because the inflammatory system set too high and it is attacking our arteries. Please understand, our arteries are not being "clogged" up excess lipids, they are being attacked by the inflammatory system.
We are beginning to understand that diet plays an important role in determining the sensitivity of the inflammatory system. We know that arachidonic acid (AA) is highly pro inflammatory, and the EPA is a competitive inhibitor of AA. We know from population studies comparing japanese to americans who have the same LDL-C levels, that the japanese with AA/EPA ratios which are one seventh the level of americans, will have one seventh the risk of CVD. There is other confirming evidence that diet effects inflammation,,(see the amino acid starvation reaction, or T. Keller on halofuginone).
And finally..yes, inflammation is not all bad and is necessary for our survival in a hostile environment. The inflammatory system guards us against microbial infection, even in acne, Still the inflammatory system is like the gas we burn in our homes, useful for cooking and heat in the winter, but still with the potential to kill us. When the inflammatory system gets out of control, the case in chronic degenerative diseases then we correctly call them inflammatory diseases, and decreasing systemic inflammation is the key to controlling them.
":>) JL
