The foods that you eat and your choices of drinks play a major role in gout flare-ups. When you have gout, you’ll need to change the way that you live your life by reducing or eliminating certain things from your diet. Drinking alcohol and eating or drinking foods and drinks with high amounts of fructose increases your risk of having a flare-up. Diets that are high in purines will increase the amount of uric acid in your bloodstream, so you’ll need to eliminate foods such as red meats, organ meat, and certain kinds of seafood from your diet.