239. Flesh Foods Contain Uric Acid Formers

Vegetarians urge that flesh should be excluded from the diet of man because such foods cause, or aggravate, rheumatic troubles. Physicians advise their patients afflicted with rheumatism to avoid certain meats or cut down to a minimum the amount eaten. While this advice is often not consistent in its details, the reasons lying behind it are that flesh, and especially certain glands like liver, contain a small proportion of compounds known as purins which are progenitors of uric acid, and that an accumulation of uric acid in the body is regarded as the exciting cause of various forms of rheumatism. Vegetable foods, milk products, and eggs are allowed on the ground that, with such a diet, the minimum of uric acid is formed. As a matter of fact, it has been shown that the addition of flesh to a vegetable diet increases the output of uric acid, and it is rational that persons with a uric acid diathesis (tendency) should eat flesh sparingly, including the flesh of fish, or not at all.

240. Purins In Vegetable Foods

At the same time, it is not yet fully determined whether uric acid may not result from synthesis in the human body, besides which vegetable foods are not free from purins, as the following table shows.

These figures make it evident that even on a vegetable diet, uric acid forming compounds are not escaped, only minimized. It is a question, too, whether rheumatism is not promoted fully as much by habits of life as by special articles of diet. It is certain that the great majority of persons who do not abuse themselves with overindulgence in eating or drinking, who take sufficient exercise and who do not submit themselves to extreme conditions of inactivity or exposure, generally are not afflicted with rheumatic troubles, even if generous meat eaters. Persons with a pronounced uric acid tendency should avoid flesh eating, perhaps, just as some persons should avoid strawberries, sweets, milk, cheese, cabbage, or some other food that proves to be harmful because of constitutional peculiarities. It does not follow when one person cannot safely indulge in a mixed diet of flesh and vegetable food that every one else should exclude the flesh.

1 " Metabolism and Practical Medicine," Von Noorden, Vol. Ill, p. 1297.

Table XL. The Purin Content Of Certain Foods