Foods For Gout – Avoid Uric Acid Foods That Cause Gout

If you’re searching for foods for gout, you’ll find 2 lists here. One shows uric acid foods to avoid that cause gout, and the other, foods for a sensible gout diet.

When you are a gout sufferer, your diet plays a key role in helping to eliminate your gout symptoms, and preventing recurring gout. And you need to prevent recurring gout, as too many attacks over time can cause permanent joint damage, even kidney problems.

The cause of your symptoms are needle-like microscopic crystals of uric acid in your joints and connective tissue. And these can form when you have high uric acid blood levels.

Where does uric acid come from? It is produced as a byproduct of the breakdown of chemical compounds in your body called purines. But here’s the thing, as well as being present in your body, they are present in the food you eat.

The thing is that different foods have different levels of purine content, so you need to be able to identify and avoid foods that are high in purines, i.e. high uric acid producing foods.

A general rule is that high purine foods are foods that are high in protein. But it is only generally true, so you must get to know the full list of ‘uric acid’ foods to avoid, and, those that are relatively low in purines which can form part of your gout diet.

To help you, here are just some of the high purine foods that you should avoid:

Game, fatty red meat, organ meat, mincemeat, meat extracts, gravies, some fish, shellfish, poultry, legumes, yeast and yeast extracts. And although not food, you have to avoid alcohol. Beer is especially known to trigger gout attacks.

And here are sensible foods for a gout diet you can eat:

Low-fat dairy produce, high vitamin C foods, complex carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, green leafy vegetables (not asparagus, cauliflower or spinach), fruit, and, drink lots of water, at least 3 liters per day.

Now, even within these food groups, there are variances in purine content – see vegetables above, and some fish are worse than others, some poultry is worse than others, and so on.

Not only that, but as everybody’s metabolism is somewhat different, some gout sufferers can eat certain foods without a problem, whereas others can eat the same food and suffer a gout attack. You need to find out where you stand on this.

And of course this is only your diet, you also need to consider other issues that can raise your gout risk, such as your lifestyle, your weight, family history, medicines you may be taking, any underlying medical conditions, etc.