Cashew nuts

Cashews are one of the two nuts the low-FODMAP tables leave out altogether rather than limit — the pistachio is the other — and the reason is their galacto-oligosaccharides, the pulse family's sugar in a nut. They also have a route into a diet that beats the portion rule: cashew cream and cashew cheese are eaten by the spoonful as a sauce, where nobody counts out ten nuts. The almond, the walnut and the macadamia are the ones limited by the handful instead.

Cashews carry GOS, which is unusual for a nut - most nuts carry none worth counting. It puts them with the pulses rather than with the almonds, and blending them into a cream multiplies the serving without feeling like it.

Cashews are high in nickel, and they are also the nut most often blended into sauces, cheeses and creams in plant-based cooking - a cashew cream is a concentrated nut portion, not a garnish.

Cashews are high in oxalate and unusually easy to eat in quantity - they are soft, mild and sold by the bag. The cashew creams and cheeses made from soaked, blended nuts are the form to watch: a cup of nuts becomes a sauce nobody portions.

Cashews are named alongside walnuts in the liberator literature, and they have a second route worth knowing: they are almost never sold raw, because the raw shell carries an irritant related to poison ivy - so what you buy has been steamed or roasted, and stored afterwards. Storage is where the amines come from. The Swiss list rates it 1 of 3 under “cashews, cashew nut” and marks it A for other biogenic amines and L for liberators of mast cell mediators. The letters are a presumed reason, not a measurement.

Cashews are lower in salicylate than almonds but still moderate, and they are eaten by the handful more readily than harder nuts.

Cashews 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.