Hi! Welcome to the Low and High Histamine Foods List.
This list is to give you a place to start in working on eating low histamine. There are many different histamine lists online. Some were created by listing every food someone reacted to. But those reactions may not have been due to histamines. Some lists include a lot of processed, packaged foods. But processed foods can make Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and Histamine Intolerance worse over time.
I wanted this list to be as reliable as possible. So I took the best research available about histamine foods to make this list. I recommend including lots of high nutrient foods from this list. Foods like cauliflower, onions, and blueberries have anti-histamine properties. So load up on the anti-histamine foods!
Remember that histamine levels work like a bucket. You might be ok with 1 strawberry or 1 bite of pineapple. But if you combine a few bites here and there of high histamine foods, your bucket might overflow.
Your histamine bucket can be more full due to exposure to seasonal allergens, mold, fluctuating hormones, dehydration, stress, etc. So keep this in mind when making food choices.
There are other types of foods that people with MCAS or Histamine Intolerance may react to. These include lectins and oxalates. So try new foods slowly and cautiously until you know how your body will respond. This list is meant to be a starting place for you to make your own personal list. If you seem to be reacting to a lot of foods that are low histamine, you may have additional food sensitivities. If this is the case, you can reach out to me for help. I can help you customize this list to your own list.
The long term goal is to support histamine pathways to work correctly and reduce mast cell over-reactivity so that we can include more foods over time. Many higher histamine foods have great nutrients. So we want to try to bring many of those back on board at some point when it is safe. I was once down to a very small number of safe foods. It has taken a lot of work to get foods back in my diet. But it isn’t healthy to be on a very restricted diet long term. I can now eat everything on the low histamine list below. I can also eat small amounts of firm avocado and dried cranberries. I want this for you too!
Just let me know if you need my help by emailing us.
Sending the best for your health!
Beth O’Hara, Functional Naturopath