Soft drink fanciers might be in the same gouty boat. High fructose intake was linked to gout in a Choi-led study published in 2008. Uric acid is one of the products of fructose metabolism, and there's good evidence from controlled feeding studies that fructose increases uric acid levels in the blood. Much of the fructose in today's American diet comes from the high-fructose corn syrup (which is about half fructose and half glucose) that's used to sweeten soft drinks.