26 Foods That You Should Avoid If You Have Gout

25. Gravy

Thanksgiving meal is often the most calories any of us will consume in a single sitting all year, with the average American consuming 3,000. It’s nothing to get excited about. This lunch of champions includes a unique cheat-day treat: gravy! You don’t get to eat white flour browned in beef fat drippings every day. Oh, and don’t forget about the salty broth! Mmmm. A dish that rich can’t possibly be healthy, right? Your instincts would be correct on that one. Gravy is heavy in fat, which is unhealthy. However, as long as you consume it in moderation, the fat content is not an issue. Again, this does not imply that you can ride the gravy train every day. But gravy contains more than simply fat: bleached white flour, saturated fat, and nitrates. Gravy has a dark side, or at least how part of it is cooked. Browning flour in a flat pan, slowly adding liquid (typically stock or broth), then boiling and stirring the fond until it’s properly thick is how gravy is made. The best gravy makers know how to scrape the chunks of meat and browned fat off the bottom of the pan and whip them up hard, usually using a white flour slurry. White flour is created by extracting (most) of the nutrients from wheat. What’s left is primarily starch, which has a high glycemic index, causing your blood sugar to jump, making you hungry sooner, causing you to eat more, causing you to gain weight. These are the processed foods that both your mother and the media have warned you about. That isn’t even the worst part. White flour is generally bleached in chlorine, which produces alloxan, a toxic byproduct that causes diabetes. Finally, nitrates are the most horrifying imaginable component (particularly in store-bought variants and restaurant dishes like biscuits and gravy). Sodium nitrate, a preservative found in processed meats including bacon, lunch meat, jerky, and others, raises the risk of heart disease. When nitrates are heated, they become carcinogenic. It’s a disaster of epic proportions, especially for someone with gout.