Today it is one week since I started my experiment in controlling gout with cherry supplements. The results have rather been the reverse from what I expected. My UA is going up, not down. So from today I will take four cherry capsules instead of the recommended two. I am a pretty big guy after all.
Breakfast: Soba noodles in mushroom soup (Japan has lots of mushrooms that you hardly see anywhere else, and they are really tasty and low purine, except for shiitake).
Lunch: Kimchi chige, a soup with Korean vegetables pickled in chili powder (and yesterday mornings eggs, unfortunately with bacon still attached).. And boiled chesnuts which my wife described as "a disaster" but which tasted great.
Snack: Nachos and guacamole.
Dinner: Deep-fried tofu in sweetish starch sauce; another kind of deep-fried and then marinated tofu with vegetables and crab sticks; and rice with beand and crispy umeboshi. Grapes for dessert.
​Todays UA reading: 8.1 mg/dL. Well, yesterdays meals were very low-purine.

Tuesday and I can see that the salmon and garlic rice yesterday is starting to show up as uric acid.
Breakfast: Rice, fried egg, one slice of bacon, and half a leftover cheese sandwich.
Lunch: Carrot and onion curry (made it myself). It would have been even nicer with chickpeas, but they are high purine food.
Snack: A couple (or three) parmesan cheese snack bits.
Dinner: Rice with natto (fermented beans), nori (the green stuff on sushi, which is not seaweed actually), and stir-fried vegetables with miso, plus pickled shallots and persimmons for dessert. Natto and nori are high-purine foods, but the rest should balance it.
​Todays UA reading: 10.0 mg/dL. If my UA keeps going up like this, I wonder if cherries do not give you gout attacks, rather than reduce them...

It's Monday again and fall as well, which not only means excellent vegetables but also great fruits. Which has a lot of fructose but also fibers, so it is much better than cakes or cookies. You will see it reflected here in the menu.
Breakfast: Miso soup and cheese sandwiches.
Lunch: Miso soup and the kids leftover breakfast cheese sandwiches. Plus a piece of that yummy salmon from yesterday.
Snack: An apple
Dinner: Garlic Rice Again! Now with spicy Asian tomato sauce.
​Todays UA reading: I fumbled a bit with the first test strip, and accidentally opened a third when I tried to get a new one. So I got three different readings: 4.1, 6.2, and 9.9 mg/dL. I think only the highest one is valid, unfortunately. But that just goes to show the importance of getting the right amount of blood in the right place when you measure, and how important it is to have an ample supply of test strips.

Yesterday I forgot to weigh myself. We were so busy rearranging furniture. So I did it today instead.
Breakfast: Yamagata-style imoni soup.
Lunch: Garlic rice and pad thai, but not together.
Snack: Pizza with prosciutto and salad, at my daughters request.
Dinner: Vegetable soup (yes, there is one sausage in it). My wife had also prepared a salmon baked in aluminium foil package with mushrooms, Not very low purine, but it tasted great.
Todays UA reading: 8.9 mg/dL
​This weeks weight: 123.4 kg

Took two cherry capsules again. But I also found out yesterday that konyakku can lower the UA, at least in mice. Well, it did not show roday. Or I am not a mouse.
Breakfast:Egg salad sandwich and a side salad
Lunch: Pasta Carbonara
Snack: Leftover spam burger and nachos with guacamole
Dinner: Salad (with beans), sushi rice.
Todays UA reading: 9.9 mg/dL. Wonder if it is the kids birthday cake?
I have already used up 30 test strips! It is harder than it should be to get the right amount of blood in the right place.

My finger joints are a bit stiff. I think that is gout, especially considering todays UA reading.
Breakfast: Miso soup, salad, and a spamburger - fried egg, cheese, and a slice of fried spam on hamburger bread.
Lunch: Miso soup, salad, and leftover garlic rice with mozarella (just put the mozarella on top of the rice when you warm it in the microwave, it melts very nicely).
Snack: Rice crackers, Made Good cereal balls, apple sauce.
Dinner: Konyakku balls, deep-fried tofu, vegetables from todays tahine.
​Todays UA reading: 9.8 mg/dL, which is even higher than yesterday.

Today I took two cherry capsules again. Wonder how long time it will take to reduce my uric acid level?
Breakfast: Salad and a bagel sandwich with scrambled egg and cheese.
Lunch: Guess what? There was leftover salad! So I added some tofu and it became extra yummy. Tofu is low purine despite being made from beans.
Snack: Cheese and scrambled egg half leftover sandwich. And a very small piece of birthday cake.
Dinner: Cold noodle salad with cucumber and egg (and crabsticks), tomatoes, pickled vegetables.
​Todays UA reading: 9.1 mg/dL, which is a bit high...,

From today, I will take cherry supplements for two weeks, while I continue to eat the same menu as I usually do (no more beer or jumbo chicken katsu, they are back on the forbidden foods list). You can read more about how I will do it and which cherry supplements I will use at the cherry experiment home page.
Breakfast: Sandwich with egg and cucumber. And two cherry capsules.
Lunch: Sandwich with egg salad and a salad (we have no leftovers since we were on vacation).
Snack: Two pouches of apple sauce and senbei (Japanese rice crackers).
Dinner: Salad and garlic rice. And a piece of the kids birtday cake.
Todays UA reading: 9.0 mg/dL, so not as high as yesterday. But I did not have any beer yesterday, so that probably affects the uric acid level quite a bit more than I thought. Even though I of course know beer is a forbidden food.

This was the last day of our mini-vacation, and the end of the buffet breakfasts and dinners. Tomorrow back to the regular program.
Breakfast: Western breakfast with sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, and yoghurt.
Lunch: Loco-moco - a hamburger with egg on rice.
Snack: No snack today.
Dinner: Jumbo chicken katsu (breaded and deep-fried) with curry sauce - 30 cm long, weighed 800 g! Well, it was a truck stop.
Todays UA reading: 11.3 mg/dL. So it takes three days of bad living to raise the uric acid concentration to attack-worthy levels. 2 mg/dL per day. Let us see what the chicken katsu does to the reading tomorrow.

This Monday was a holiday in Japan. So we continued our trip. Today we went to Hawaiians spa and resort, a water park fed by the most productive hot spring in Japan. This used to be a coal mining town, but the CEO realized that people wanted to go to Hawaii but could not afford it, so he built a piece of Hawaii in Fukushima, where the climate was too cold to grow palm trees. So he built the biggest dome north of Tokyo, taught the coal miners wives to put on a daily hula show, and the rest is history. When they had to shut down after the 2011 tsunami, and again this year due to COVID-19, they just expanded the facilities. And the customers are coming.
Breakfast: The most sumptous mix of different flavors available, with rice and the local "imoni" soup from various root vegetables and pork.
Lunch: Japanese buckweat noodles with tempura (alhough I only got one piece, the kids ate the rest).
Snack: No snack today, we were too busy playing in the pools.
Dinner: Buffet of various Japanese- and Japanese-inspired dishes. Always impossible to make one choice but one: Too much.
​Todays UA reading: 7.7 mg/mL. Well, yesterday was a pretty low-purine day, despite the magnificient dinner.