Gout Diet Blog

Tilapia is a great fish for anyone who needs to add more fish to their diet. Tilapia fish is lean and high in protein. This is one of many popular tilapia recipes where the fish is combined with vegetables to add beneficial vitamins. Don’t worry about the alcohol; all of it will boil away before the dish is ready to eat.

Start by heating up a big skillet over medium heat. Ideally use a non-stick skillet since this will reduce the need for grease. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the 6 ounces of tilapia fillets and season with salt and pepper. Put the fillets in the skillet and squeeze the juice from ½ lemon over them. Cook the fillets until you can use a fork to flake them, it will normally take around 3 minutes per side. Put the fillets on a warm plate and keep them warm. Squeeze the remaining ½ of the lemon over the skillet and add ½ cup of white wine, 2 chopped tomatoes, 3 tablespoons of capers, and salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat up to medium high and leave to boil for 2 minutes (this will remove the alcohol from the white wine). Bring the heat down to low and put the fillets back in the skillet. Add 1 cup of asparagus spears (cut in halves). Cover the skillet and leave to simmer for 2 minutes. Serve immediately.

Tips! If you are okay with adding some butter to the dish, you can increase the heat to medium high after removing the tilapia fillets. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of butter and boil to desired consistency. Spoon the butter sauce over the tilapia fillets and serve. Butter is rich in fat soluble vitamins.

I have read that eating cherries or drinking cherry juice helps toreduce Uric acid levels. I have tried to buy cherry juice here inthe UK but with no success. Does anyone have a contact/name/addressof a supplier or stockist of cherry juice?

It is time to get down to the strawberry nitty gritty. Dosage. How manyounces of strawberries should a 150 lb 76-year male eat per day in order toget the desired effect.

This weekend I chanced to drop by a cherry shop (to buy tomatoes).while I was there, I noticed various sizes of bottles of cherry juiceand containers of juice concentrate in the cooler. I asked thesalesclerk for the prices. He gave me prices and volunteered muchinfo. He said the concentrate was made from a different kind ofcherry than the bottled juice and that he had people coming from allover the state to buy the concentrate for their gout. The concentrateis made from “Montmorency” cherries (which are tart and not usuallysold fresh to the public these days). He said that the bottled juicehe had (Bing or Black Cherry, I forget) was mainly for a beverage andhe insinuated that it didn’t have much effect on gout.

In the past, I have tried the occasional quart or 1/2 gallon bottleof pure Black Cherry juice (Knudsens or Trader Joe’s in California)in between or during attacks but I wasn’t able to tell if it helpedor not. (Usually I loose interest when the pain is not there, so I’venot taken it for any long stretches).

Maybe part of the reason some people swear by cherries and othersfind little or no effect is due to the particular variety of cherrythey try, maybe the tart ones have a more pronounced effect.

I don’t post very often but I’ve been a ‘lurking’ member of this listback since March ‘99 (archives post # 7). ….BJD

Links and info….The Montmorency Concentrate was about US$35, but it was made from 20gallons of cherries (the size of the concentrate looked to be abouta 1/2 gallon or so. They also have a smaller US$25 size that theywere sold out of for a few days. There was also a hand pump availablethat fit into the concentrate bottles so you could pump out a shot ata time. I got the impression there was no other ingredients in theconcentrate (need to ask), it kept in the ‘fridge’ for months (6 or12, I can’t remember).The cherry shop I dropped by is C.J. Olsen Cherries in Sunnyvale,California. Their WEB site is http://www.cjolsoncherries.com but it’shard to find mention of the Tart Cherry concentrate on their site(the salesclerk said they ship product UPS all over thecountry(world?).Best to try e-mailing them at bings@… or phoning at1-800-738-2464 to confirm this.

On Olsens’ I found a link the “Cherry Marketing Institute”(http://www.cherrymkt.org/index.html)and they have all sorts of info on the health benefits of cherries,especially the tart ones. They have links to other sources all overthe USA (http://www.cherrymkt.org/wheretobuy/index.html). The Healthinfo… http://www.cherrymkt.org/health/index.html

More than you wanted to know about cherries, eh! ..BJD

I just had a medium grade attack today in the middle of my left foot. I ate badly this weekend with a burger and Italian beef sandwich on Friday. However, I do believe it was the coffee that triggered the attack today. Yesterday, I drank coffee from the Coffee Bean store which is usually a little bit stronger than my usual coffee I drink during the week. I have narrowed it down that when I drink a stronger coffee at the Coffee Bean or Starbucks, this triggers the attack. However, during the week I do not get any attacks from my regular coffee. I am trying to limit my intake of coffee but its very difficult since I kind of addicted to it. Does any have this problem with the strength of the coffee?

I do not drink coffee and haven’t for about 25 years. Nor do Iconsume much in the way of caffeinated soft drinks, but for someof us Coke, and stimulant drinks like Red Eye, Red Bull and “V”might be a problem.

If you are trying to analyse your caffeine intake don’t forget to countthese other things as well as coffee.

could s.o. please explain why it is so bad to drink coffee? Does it doanything bad to the joints when one suffers from gout? Or is it just bad ingeneral?

So would it be the sweetener in these drinks that is the culprit? Doyou know which sweetener it is? Could well be in other products ifit’s the sweetener rather than the drink itself?

I thought my gout would get worse as the weather got colder, butwe’re now in the depths of winter here in Australia and haven’t hada twinge - no aches and pains that I’ve had since last Sept -nothing for three weeks. I haven’t changed my diet/lifestyle oranything else that I can think of during these weeks. The onlychange is the cold weather. I thought this was supposed to make itworse?

For what it’s worth, I have been drinking tons of skim milk for many years, simply because I have always loved milk, and switched to skim maybe 15-20 years ago. I drink 2 gallons per week and sometimes mire than that. And I had my first of two gout attacks, two days apart, in Feb. So I don’t know how relevant skim milk may be. I also have Paget’s disease, so the milk factor may be moot in the calcium equation.

I urge you to read the paper,http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh21-1/84.pdfby Murray Epstein, titled “Alcohol’s Impact On Kidney Function”.Compare his clinical and laboratory findings with your ownexperience.The bottom line of the rather long and complicated article is thatwhereas your rate of liquid removal with alcohol is increased, i.e.you gotta go to the head more often, the rate of removal of thingsyou want to get rid of, is dramatically reduced. In other words withalcohol, your body starts to dump water but stops removing theimpurities. This has the effect of increasing your monosodium urateconcentration in your blood and creating a problem. Water will indeedhelp the situation but until the liver can metabolize the alcohol,your kidneys take a vacation from impurity remocal, so to speak. thatis they stop removing urate from your system. If you are not in thethrows of an attack, it will probably not hurt you, however, if youare on the edge of an attack or in one, it will be a bad idea todrink alcohol. During my first attack I drank about a liter of winethinking that it would numb the strange pain I had in my toe.I can testify, under oath, that it did not help. I think I actuallysaw it swell as the wine disappeared.