How big is a portion of cereal in your house?

[Arch]

But, is there any difference between the naturally occurring fruit sugars and the refined white sugar that is added to foods?

NT has had what we think was gout recently, and looking it up, one of the dietary triggers can be fructose - the sugar we all think of as 'good' and natural...

 

[Doseone]

NT has had what we think was gout recently, and looking it up, one of the dietary triggers can be fructose - the sugar we all think of as 'good' and natural...

In the back of my mind I always thought fructose might be ok because it's natural and we are 'meant to eat it', but from what you say it seems that may not be the case. Hope NT is ok.

 

[Fab Foodie]

NT has had what we think was gout recently,

Think he had gout? Was he in extreme agony and willing to chop his toe off with a meat cleaver?
If not it wasn't gout

 

[Arch]

Think he had gout? Was he in extreme agony and willing to chop his toe off with a meat cleaver?

Yes, he was. Described it as walking on shards of glass.

Lots of stuff (symptoms and possible triggers) suggested it was gout, although his doctor helpfully said that it might be something that looked like gout, but wasn't.

The worst thing was that he was still in the orthopedic boot for the achilles injury, and this was the other foot, so he didn't have one fully useful foot for a week or so - a week in which we were on holiday. He's much better now though.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Yes, he was. Described it as walking on shards of glass.

Lots of stuff (symptoms and possible triggers) suggested it was gout, although his doctor helpfully said that it might be something that looked like gout, but wasn't.

They did that to me too .... It's bloody painful!

 

[Arch]

In the back of my mind I always thought fructose might be ok because it's natural and we are 'meant to eat it', but from what you say it seems that may not be the case. Hope NT is ok.

Yes, we're meant to eat it, in that we are omnivores and hence eat fruit, but I guess our diets are so abnormal now that even 'natural' foods can be too much, coming on top of the unnatural stuff. Also, fruit juice is a very concentrated form of the sugar, without the bulk and fibre of whole fruit, so we might tend to drink much more of it than we would eat in whole fruit.... (Which is why you can't claim 5 glasses of juice as your five a day).

Plus in the gout situation, it can come on top of a lot of other foodstuffs (and some medication) which are considered healthy, but contain certain chemicals, a build up of which causes the gout. The 'good' stuff just tips the build up into critical mass, so to speak.

 

[Arch]

They did that to me too .... It's bloody painful!

Yes, it was horrible to watch him trying to get a boot on....

Apparently one of the treatments is an injection into the affected joint during an attack. He did say he thought he'd rather cut it off than allow that.