Amine Foods List / Low Amine Grocery List
Low amine recipes start at the grocery store.
Amine allergies and amine sensitivities make grocery shopping an overwhelmingly difficult task. All the foods you would normally grab are now on the “can’t have it” list. When you’re first starting to do food shopping with an amine allergy, it’s helpful to have this amine foods list printed as a quick reference.
*** LOW AMINE GROCERY SHOPPING LIST ***
Grocery shopping was daunting without a list, and the one I had was a word document and a nightmare to use, so I created this low-amine spreadsheet to make it easier. Remember, the lower in amines, the better. The higher in amines, the more careful you should be about intake.
Note: Amine Food List Ingredients in italics are guesses based on related items and personal experience.
Note: Foods marked with H or T correlate with Histamine and Tyramine. For instance, a “T” in the “low” column but “H” in the high column would mean that food item is low in Tyramines, but high in Histamines. Information on histamines and tyramines is difficult to find, so forgive the incomplete nature of the information regarding this.
Note: If you test an ingredient that isn’t on my list, please let me know your results. I would love to add it to my list to share with others in the amine allergic community. Unfortunately, my own sensitivities are not reactive enough to do reliable amine tests on my own.
Important General Guidelines for Amines (not listed on the spreadsheet):
- The fresher the food is, the better it is. If you have two cucumbers, and cuke #1 is a day older than cuke #2, cuke #2 will be higher in amines. Because amines are annoying that way.
- Almost everything preserved (dried, canned, frozen, aged, or fermented) is going to be very high in amines. In order of bad to worse, from what I understand: fresh food that’s old, frozen, dried, canned, aged/fermented/pickled.
- MSG is high in amines, and it’s a synthetic chemical. Yuck. Just avoid it, folks.
- Muscle meat of most animals (high in amines: all pork, tuna, salmon, herring, mackerel) is okay, so long as it’s very, very fresh.
- Processed foods are generally no good. The more processing ingredients go through, the older they are and the higher in amines they will be.
- For a trustworthy low-amine diet, start with fresh, whole, low-amine ingredients and produce. That said, I do not eat every meal freshly made that day. I plan in advance and try to mentally schedule my meals somewhat. For instance, I might make low-amine burritos for a week’s lunches and freeze them for a short period of time. These burritos will me MUCH better for me than frozen burritos purchased at the store that have already been processed, frozen, transported, and stored for an unknown length of time.
- Juice is tricky. Drink only fresh juices from trusted sources. Many commercially prepared juices have been sitting around in storage much longer than you ever would want to think about.
Keep high-amine processed foods out of your diet (I know… You’ll probably miss the cat food most of all. Mao mao!).
Published on August 11, 2011 at 8:02 pm Comments (145) 
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