I’ve Suffered From Gout
A Radicalized Confession
It was a weekend gathering of some of my dearest food friends. Friday evening our kitchen filled up with familiar bodies and tempting smells, all weaving and bobbing about each other as chicken was fried. A pie was baked, sampled, and enjoyed again the next day with bacon for breakfast. That Saturday morning I set a hunk of beef brisket to braise low and slow before we set about town for the day in search of more great meals and future food memories. There were probably tacos. When we gathered around the table out back later that night and tucked into the juicy, rich, fall-apart-tender meat, washing it down with wine and laughter, I don’t recall there being any leftovers.
On Sunday I woke up to my right foot aching where my big toe joins the rest of my foot. Stiffness in my overworked body was becoming a common morning occurrence, and I chided myself that it had been foolish to walk about the city in sandals the previous day. But as the hours passed, the pain kept tugging at my awareness. I commented on it as I hobbled up the stairs that afternoon, shifting my weight from the uncomfortable stiffness. One of my friends looked up at me from the couch where he was consulting the medical expertise of the internet and said, “What if you have gout?”
I brushed this off. Thirty seven year old, healthy-ish women do not get gout. But that night, as the feeling of the bed sheet lightly falling over my foot felt like a hammer smashing my big toe, which was hot, a fear began to rise up in me. I laid awake, phone in hand, posing questions to my web browser about the symptoms of gout, and came to the same conclusion. This could really be happening to me.
The next morning, having said goodbye to our beloved guests, I swallowed a few ibuprofen with breakfast and made my way to the warehouse where my business and employees awaited a day full of meat processing. It was Monday, work life was back to full throttle, and I was needed on my feet. I limped around on the concrete floors, carefully rocking my weight to the outer edge of my foot to keep as little pressure as possible on my tender big toe. By mid-day, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I admitted pain and defeat to my team and headed to my physician's office.
The symptoms checked out. It appeared I had gout. We discussed my diet. Sure, I was a butcher who ate a lot of meat, but I made a point to note that many of my calories were home cooked and heavy on whole grains and vegetables, despite the prevalence of high-purine ingredients. As always, I rounded down how many alcoholic drinks I consumed on average. Don’t we all? Tests were ordered, including blood work to evaluate my uric acid levels and x-rays to look for crystallization in my joints, and medicine prescribed. It would take a few days for the pain and stiffness to subside, I was told, but the drugs should help.
A few days later, when the pain had dulled to a level where I could once again tolerate being upright, I dragged a massive cooler containing a whole side of pork from my car onto a rolling cart through a parking garage, up a freight elevator, and along a hallway to a public event venue with an elevated platform where a crowd awaited. I had been invited to share my story to a room full of culinary professionals as I demonstrated butchering a pig.
While I cut, I talked about the ethics of eating whole animals, how I had found my way through farming to butchery. I connected cooking to anatomy, and I championed the people who raised animals with care, in symbiotic harmony with the pastures and woods they roamed and grazed. I tried to hide both my discomfort and subtle limp on the way in, but standing on that stage in my non-slip clogs, looking out at the rapt audience, my foot once again began to throb.
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When butchery was my form of advocacy, I was outraged by media headlines that generalized a need for everyone to eat less beef. I wanted more people to understand that not all meat is raised the same. On occasion, a regular customer would appear at the butcher shop counter with news that the doctor had ordered no more “red meat”, due to high cholesterol or heart disease. Each time this happened, I would mourn the loss of another good meat eater.
It always pained me to consider that truly grass-fed, omega and nutrient-rich beef from ethical sources could have the same impact on the body as meat from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations that is produced at the expense of animals, people, and the planet. But now my own body tells me this might be true.
Recalling my memories from that first bout of gout, it’s not the discomfort I remember most vividly, although it was memorable. What returns to me with a feeling as visceral as the tears I shed, hot pain forcing me to give up on standing as I waited for the drugs I had ingested to do their job, is the overwhelming sense of shame that I felt.
Ethically-raised meat had become not just my work, but my passion. I had practiced to a point of mastery as a whole animal butcher and was viewed as an expert. In pursuit of my mission to build up an alternative and local supply chain, I hustled and sampled my wares with great enthusiasm. What if the thing I committed my life and work to was harming me?
When the blood tests to check my uric acid levels, the key indicator for gout, finally came back, they were normal. They have never since been elevated. The first rheumatologist I visited as a follow-up diagnosed me with “pseudogout”, which I have been quick to specify ever since, should I be questioned about the history of gout in my medical records. I still don’t know what triggers the state of painful inflammation which ultrasounds have shown in the joints of my feet, and now my hands too. My new rheumatologist continues to send me for labs and imaging like a detective who won’t give up a case.
Fun fact: My only other proper gout flare up would occur five years later, when I was under extreme stress working through the final stages of closing my business. How’s that for a real life example of how the body keeps score?
While I wish all the tests I’ve undergone would tell me something concrete, I do know how I feel. There are of course other factors at play (like the many supplements I take and the significant reduction of stress and anxiety in my current life), but my diet has changed dramatically towards plant-based in the time since I closed my butchery business and reconsidered my personal relationship with meat, and overall I feel better.
Until now, I have never shared this information with more than a few close friends and family. I made a point to keep the fact that I suffered from gout from being known in my professional life. It was too irreconcilable with my identity. And most of all, I worried about casting doubt on the sustainable, or as we now say, regenerative, farming practices I believed in. But despite all my efforts to support ethical meat as an alternative, it is no more accessible to the average person than was the case two decades ago when my own journey into whole animal butchery began.
These days I read articles calling to eat less beef, like this one, in a different light than I used to. I’ve come to accept that the imagined reality where a majority of people abstain from factory-farmed sources of animal protein while maintaining omnivorous (or per more recent trends, heavily carnivorous) diets is unlikely. Those of us omnivores who boycott unethical meat, eggs, and dairy are an extreme minority.
Even if physical health, or reducing animal cruelty aren’t motivators for you personally, the impacts of industrial livestock production on the environment, which is most likely the source of meat on your plate, should be of pressing concern. We all need to take a more radical stance towards reform, and if that means it’s time for this butcher to publicly promote a shift towards meat-free diets, I’m here for it.
I want to openly encourage everyone to evaluate their relationship with meat, and to question its sources. If you can’t find access to, or afford to purchase, truly ethical and environmentally sustainable animal proteins1, consider feeding your body with nutritious, plant-based alternatives. The outcome may surprise you, maybe you’ll feel better too.
What I’m Cooking
Every week it’s a new pot of beans as the start of many meals. I ordered a quantity that might qualify me as a hoarder of dried beans from my friends at Boonville Barn Collective (supplies are currently running low from the 2024 harvest, but you can still find a few varieties available) and I’m finding plenty of inspiration from The Bean Book, which I treated myself to in celebration of Binding Agents (Philly’s own, and only, cookbookstore!) opening a few months back.
I think I’ll write more about beans soon, including some favorite recipes to inspire you all to crave more plant-based proteins.
What I’m Reading
It may not surprise you that I spent much of the past few stressful months retreating into the comfort of great fiction. I read works of epic page counts that spanned lifetimes, and ultimately was reminded that life always goes on. I will highly recommend the journey through The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
More recently I returned to one of my most beloved authors, Barbara Kingsolver, to read her 2019 novel Unsheltered, which coincidentally is partially set in the year leading up to the 2016 election. A lighter but still thought provoking work of fiction, it reminded me that the past holds lessons for the present, as we all simply carry on to inevitable futures that we can’t control.
In the mainstream media, this opinion piece from the New York Times, titled, “Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food” which encourages us to accept industrial agriculture “as a necessary evil”, made me boil with anger and concern that readers would accept this stance. Based on the letters to the editor in response that were published under the headline, “Changing How We Grow Our Food”, I wasn’t the only one.
While I Was Away…
I determined that this doesn’t warrant its own newsletter, but I do owe you as readers an apology that I haven’t written in so long. In the season that followed the election, it was a challenge to process my feelings. During that time I lost my flow, and ultimately my confidence, about what to share from this little platform that I feel fortunate to have.
I’ve written hundreds of words and deleted them, but I will share this: The most disappointing, discouraging, and depressing revelation that has become clearer with each day since November 6th is the knowledge that I am, in no uncertain terms, part of a minority when it comes to caring about the future of all people and the planet.
In lieu of my own ramblings, here are some notable newsletters I’ve saved that reflect some my own concerns and sentiments about the state of, well, everything:
“Well Someone Must Be Making Money Doing This” from
I cannot tell you how many times in recent months someone has said to me, “Well someone must be making money doing this…” when I say I’m coming to the conclusion that storefront businesses are uniquely economically threatened.
“This is How Much America Still Hates Women” from
This is the adult conversation our children are observing. This is what they will understand about their childhoods: a period when their country clarified whose lives mattered and where power should rest.
“They Did This to Us” from
If I were to write a headline of last night’s wildfires, I would write: “Los Angeles Burns in Corporate-Backed Climate Offensive” or “Los Angeles Engulfed by Fires in Ongoing Climate Conflict Waged by the Ultra-Rich.”
“The People Who Don't Want You to Sleep” from
When former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris testified before the U.S. Senate in 2019, he explained why so many of us are perpetually distracted by our phones: “You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.”
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As I sign off I want to say with hope that while I know for sure the federal government won’t save us, I still believe our communities might. Those of us with shared values will need each other more than ever in the months and years to come. Thank you for reading, and for being here.
With love and gratitude,
Heather
We can debate to great degree about whether eating meat can be ethical and what sustainably-raised means, but to clarify, I’m encouraging you to purchase from family-owned farms, like the ones that practice rotational grazing with small herds, maybe a few hundred cattle tops, vs. the thousands of head of beef jammed shoulder to shoulder in a feedlot. I do still believe you can make a positive environmental and economic impact by supporting the former.
I have my own shame-riddled experience with gout. It involved a summer of too many oysters, pinot grigio and a lot of midday jogging. The result was an angry red pinky finger that burned with shooting pain every time the air conditioner blew cool air across it. I also appreciate how one's passion for regenerative ranching can make you a bit bullish on meat eating. But swinging the other way can have its own sustainability--and health--pitfalls too. Relying on heavily processed plant proteins, or high carbohydrate meals fueled by monoculture isn't much better for the environment or one's blood sugar. In my mind, there is something elegant to moderation. But then again, I am trying to live like an enlightened omnivore. Thanks for your openness and honesty. We have to keep challenging assumptions so that we can find a common ground. And I'm enjoying reading along on your journy, no matter how often you write. Thanks for sharing!