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Foods to Avoid --and Enjoy --with
Gout
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My Heart Attack-Personal Stories from Survivors
How Much Salt Is In My Food?
How Much Sugar Is In My Food?
September 24, 2012, last updated April 24, 2013
By Alison Turner, Featured Columnist
4. Pop: Bad. Diet Pop? Better.
Those of us who choose diet pop instead of regular tip the
can to our lips with a certain amount of adventure: do we
really know what we’re putting inside of our bodies?
Despite whatever may be down the road for us diet pop-
drinkers, research from 2007 suggests that diet soda is
better than regular in terms of gout.
Jee Woong Choi with the Arthritis Research Centre of
Canada in Vancouver, worked with researchers in Atlanta
and Boston to “evaluate the relationship” between diet
soda, regular soda, and serum uric acid levels in nearly
15,000 men and women using data from the Third National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted from
1988 to 1994. The results were clear: “serum acid levels
increased with increasing sugar-sweetened soft drink
intake,” while “diet soft drink consumption was not
associated with serum uric acid levels.”
If your serum uric acid levels are on the rise, you might want
to switch from regular pop to diet: of course, there’s never
been anything wrong with a good ole glass of ice cold water.
5. High Fructose Orange Juice: A Gout No-No. If we don’t
want to increase our odds for gout by drinking pop (see
above) but are worried about diet soft drinks for other
reasons, we could just drink orange juice, right? WRONG.
In 2010, Dr. Walter Willett with the Department of
Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health worked
with colleagues to see what fructose-rich beverages – in
particular, orange juice – would do to the risk of gout for
women.
Out of nearly 79,000 women without gout at the beginning
of the study from the Nurses’ Health Study spanning from
1984 to 2006, 779 of these women experienced gout during
the 22 years of follow up. In addition to confirming that
soda increases the risk for gout (see above), the team found
that good ole o.j. is not as innocent as we thought: the
“absolute risk” of gout with the consumption of orange juice
was 14 out of 100,000.
Perhaps this is nothing to dump out all of your opened
orange juice cartons over, but the study does conclude that
“consumption of fructose-rich beverages is associated with
an increased risk of gout.”
Looks like gout has as much to do with what we drink (beer,
pop and orange juice), as what we eat: decreasing our risk
for gout takes dedicated discipline.
6. Sea (no more) Food. We can’t eat too much meat for
gout (see above): check. But for those of us living by the
sea, we, too, have to watch how much we consume of the
local fare. A 2009 study on sea-side dwellers in China found
that high consumption of sea food can also put us at risk for
gout.
In 2009 a large team of experts from institutions in
Tennessee and Shanghai, led by R. Villegas with Vanderbilt
University Medical Center in Nashville, analyzed data from
nearly 4,000 men between the ages of 40 and 74 living in
Shanghai. The aim was to investigate “direct links” between
high-purine foods and hyperuricemia, a common risk factor
for gout. After collecting data from “food frequency
questionnaires” and lifestyle factors, the team found a
“positive association between protein from animal sources”
and hyperuricemia, and a particularly high prevalence with
seafood intake.
The team’s data suggests “a direct association between
seafood consumption and hyperuricemia” (a risk factor for
gout) in middle-aged, Chinese men.
If you’re not middle-aged, or Chinese, or a man, it may
nevertheless be best to not get too excited at next week’s
clam bake: if possible, play the moderation game with
seafood. As mentioned in the introduction, gout can affect
anyone.
7. Finally, Good News: Eat More Dairy if You’re at Risk for
Gout! Up to now we’ve been going on and on about the
gout no-no’s – but avoiding gout isn’t all about
deprivation. Researchers from Massachusetts General
Hospital, for example, found evidence that dairy
consumption may decrease our odds for gout.
In 2004, researcher H.K. CHoi and colleagues with the
Rheumatology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital
conducted a prospective study on over 47,000 men over a
twelve-year period, in which they analyzed the connection
between dietary products and gout. At the beginning of the
study none of the men had any history of gout. Over the
twelve-year period, 730 cases of gout emerged. The data
from these incidents and food questionnaires revealed that
“the incidence of gout decreased with increasing intake of
dairy products,” suggesting that dairy products are
associated with a decreased risk for gout.
Keep in mind that over-eating in general is a risk factor for
gout: a bowl of yogurt may be good, but a gallon of ice
cream…maybe not as good for gout.
8. Drink More Coffee! More than half of all Americans drink
coffee at the rate of two cups a day (and some of us are
shameless addicts): research from 2007 suggests that this
may be a good thing, at least as far as gout is concerned.
In 2007, Walter Willett with the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health, along with
colleagues, found good news for those of us who do not
start our mornings bright-eyed and bushy-tailed: a survey of
nearly 46,000 men revealed that “increasing coffee intake
was inversely associated with the risk of gout.”
(Interestingly, this effect was not seen with the consumption
of tea).
The team proposes that this benefit may be attributed to
caffeine’s stimulation of thermogenesis and the ensuing
increased amount of energy that is spent, thus helping with
weight management (a risk factor for gout – see
introduction). Whatever the explanation may be, the data
encourages that “long-term coffee consumption is
associated with a lower risk of incident gout.”
Hmm, drink more dairy and drink more coffee to decrease
our risk for gout? I think I smell a gout-healthy latte coming
my way.
9. Choose Your Vegetables Wisely.
You’d think it would be ok to eat vegetables: not always.
Some vegetables such as asparagus, cauliflower and peas,
are high in purine, and thus may increase the risk for gout.
In 2008, researchers from Teikyo University in Japan,
including K. Kaneko with the Department of Analytical
Chemistry, determined the purine content of various
Japanese vegetables, including Japanese mushrooms. The
latter, the special fungi, showed a 9.5-142 mg of purine per
100 grams. This level, the team advises, “did not exceed
200mg/100g” and so eating Japanese mushrooms “should
be adopted.”
If you’ve never had Japanese mushrooms before, try
replacing them every now and then for some of your purine-
rich vegetables (peas? Not today. I’ll take the Japanese
mushrooms).
10. Cherry Juice: Good for Gout.
Ok, so orange juice is bad for gout (see above) so cherry
juice must be…good? According to a study conducted this
year, in 2012, cherry juice concentrate may be a gout anti-
venom.
Dr. Naimo Schlesinger with the Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School and Dr. Michael Schlesinger with The Hebrew
University at Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, looked
into ways to relieve the pain and inflammation associated
with flare-ups of gout: why not try cherry juice?
The Drs. Schlesinger conducted three studies, the results of
which suggested that after drinking cherry juice for at least
four months, the concentrate “reduced the incidence of
flares in gout patients,” and that this happens “via anti-
inflammatory actions.”
If any of you out there suffer a hopeless addiction to fruit
juice, you now have a savior: switch your guilty cup of
choice with cherry juice, and you may be clearing gout out
of your future.
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Sugar-The Disease Connection / Are Diet Sodas Bad for Your
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