About FoodCanEat

We help people with gout make informed food choices — by showing you exactly what's in your food, where the data comes from, and how we reach every verdict.

Who We Are

FoodCanEat was built to solve a real problem: if you have gout, you need to check purine, fructose, and alcohol for hundreds of foods — and most resources give you vague advice like "avoid red meat" without telling you which cuts, how much purine, or what to eat instead.

We're a small, independent team of researchers and developers who believe dietary guidance should be transparent. Every number on this site links back to its original source. Every verdict is generated by a consistent, documented methodology — not by copying-and-pasting blog posts from other sites.

How We Determine Food Safety

The V2 Judgment Engine

Every food on this site is evaluated by our V2 Engine — a three-factor framework that mirrors the approach used in clinical dietary guidance for gout:

1. Step 1 — Alcohol check. If it's an alcoholic beverage, it goes straight to alcohol evaluation. Beer is the worst (yeast purines + ethanol), followed by spirits (high ethanol), then wine (lowest risk, but still risky during flares).
2. Step 2 — Purine check. For meat, seafood, legumes, mushrooms, and organ meats, we check purine levels against clinical thresholds: ≤50mg/100g = safe, 50–150mg = moderate, >150mg = avoid. These thresholds are based on international clinical guidelines (ACR 2020, Japan Gout Society, Chinese NHCC 2024).
3. Step 3 — Fructose check. For fruits, vegetables, snacks, and sweetened products, we evaluate fructose content: <2g/100g = safe, 2–5g = moderate, >5g = avoid. This is stricter than general nutrition guidelines — designed specifically for the uric acid pathway.

Cross Matrix (Purine × Fructose)

For foods that have both measurable purine and fructose, we apply a cross-matrix. A food can be low-purine but still be flagged if its fructose is high — because fructose independently triggers uric acid production through the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway.

	Fructose <2g	Fructose 2–5g	Fructose >5g
Purine ≤50mg	🟢 Safe	🟡 Moderate	🔴 Avoid
Purine 50–150mg	🟡 Moderate	🟡 Moderate	🔴 Avoid
Purine >150mg	🔴 Avoid	🔴 Avoid	🔴 Avoid

Plant Purine Exception

Vegetables that naturally contain purines — like spinach, asparagus, broccoli, and mushrooms — are not flagged based on purine content alone. ACR 2020 research confirms that plant-source purines are metabolized differently from animal purines and contribute minimally to uric acid levels. These foods are evaluated on fructose, not purine.

Inflammation Labels

Where evidence supports it, we label foods with anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory properties. These labels are supplementary — they don't change the verdict — but help you understand which foods may help or hurt beyond just their purine numbers. Sources include the Arthritis Foundation, Mayo Clinic, WHO IARC, and the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII).

Where Our Data Comes From

Every purine, protein, fat, and fructose value on this site comes from one of these sources. We do not estimate, guess, or copy numbers from other websites.

Data points are independently sourced: a single food page may pull purine from Japan, protein from USDA, and fat from USDA — whichever database has the most recent, most precise values for that specific field. Every number on every page is labeled with its source.

Editorial Standards

Data Freshness

All data we use for food verdicts must be from 2021 or later — within 5 years. Data older than 5 years is excluded from the judgment engine. We re-evaluate our entire food database when major guideline updates are published (such as the anticipated ACR 2025 update).

No AI-Generated Verdicts

Every safe/moderate/avoid label on this site is produced by a deterministic, rules-based engine — not a language model. The engine applies the same thresholds to every food, consistently. FAQ content is programmatically generated from structured data and vetted citation libraries. No answer is hallucinated.

Citation Policy

We cite authoritative sources wherever a specific claim is made. If a FAQ answer includes a source tag — [Source: Arthritis Foundation] — that source was directly consulted. We do not fabricate citations or attribute generic claims to specific institutions.

Language Standards

We follow strict content guidelines to ensure our dietary guidance remains within safe, non-medical bounds:

• We never use words like "treat," "cure," "prevent," or "lower uric acid" without attribution to a specific study or guideline.
• We never provide medical dosage recommendations (portion sizes, medication advice).
• We never use the term "AI" to describe our content — it's data-driven, not AI-generated.
• Every page includes a medical disclaimer with a link to consult a doctor.

What We Cover

FoodCanEat currently evaluates over 380 foods across 15 food categories, making it one of the most comprehensive gout-specific food databases available online:

Category	Foods	Category	Foods
Meat	70	Fruit	27
Seafood	64	Grains	23
Vegetables	42	Processed Meats	22
Dairy & Eggs	34	Beverages	21
Legumes	29	Alcohol	16
		Nuts, Condiments & Others	34