Gout was historically known as the disease of kings blah blah blah–you know, because they ate so much and did so little (although it must be said the only reason Henry VIII became husky was because of an injury he suffered–for a truly chubby, shiftless bon vivant, you have to look to the French court). So it's nice to see that in the United States, the land where every citizen is a king (except the Mexicans, of course), rates of gout are increasing to all-time highs.
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But here's the sad part, according to the Scientific American story that launched the research into the mainstream: rates of gout are increasing worldwide, even in poor countries, due to bad eating habits and the erosion of traditional foodways as American mass-produced crap floods pantries worldwide (look at Samoa and how its love of Spam has created a dietary crisis).
The worst part about this, of course, is that gout is completely preventable, that there's no known predisposed cause to it other than eating too much food, period.
What's next for us in our over-indulgent society–we all start getting Hapsburg chins?
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