Almond

Almond reaches people well beyond the whole nut — almond milk, flour, butter and marzipan all carry whatever it carries — and nothing published ranks its salicylate against the other nuts.

Almonds are named in the reference nickel table among the very high foods, alongside the other tree nuts. They are also eaten by the handful and ground into flours, butters and drinks, so the daily total climbs faster than a single portion suggests.

Almonds carry much of their oxalate in the skin, so soaking and blanching them — which slips the skin off — takes part of it away. That is the one preparation step that changes the answer for an almond eaten whole.

The almond is a dry seed, and a dry seed produces no amines - bacteria need water to work. Rancidity does not change that: it is the oil reacting with oxygen, which yields aldehydes and off-flavours rather than amines - a good reason to smell before eating, and not a histamine one.

Almonds carry serotonin and related amines - nuts have been assayed for those specifically - but little tyramine. Dry seeds do not ferment, and it is fermentation that makes tyramine.

Almonds carry galacto-oligosaccharides, the class the pulses carry, in a quantity a handful does not reach: about ten nuts is the serve the Monash tables leave in. What passes it is the form rather than the nut — ground almond by the cupful in a cake, or a bowl eaten without counting, is several serves at once. Monash gives a threshold per serve, which answers how much rather than how concentrated.

Almonds carry a little GOS - enough that the threshold is counted in nuts rather than handfuls, around ten. They are the standard nut on this diet, but they are not unlimited, which surprises people who treat them as free. Pulse oligosaccharides are water-soluble, and that is the practical point: the level here follows work on pulses AND on what cooking does to them, because soaking and boiling move part of them into water that is usually thrown away.