Chicken broth

Chicken broth is notable for FODMAPs, histamine, oligosaccharides, gluten, tyramine and salicylate. Clear on lactose, fructose, sorbitol, sucrose, nickel and oxalates.

Chicken broth contains moderate levels of FODMAPs. Chicken broth is the one worth making at home for FODMAPs, because the chicken carries the flavour and the aromatics are optional. Bones, carrot, celery, bay and parsley give a stock that measures low here; it is the onion and garlic in the commercial version that put it at this level.

Chicken broth contains moderate levels of histamine. A chicken broth simmered for two hours from a fresh carcass and one simmered all day and kept for a week are two different foods, but not for the reason usually given: the simmering PRODUCES no amines. At 95 degrees the bacteria that make them are long dead. What the hours do is extract what the bird already carried and then concentrate it as the liquid reduces, so the freshness of the carcass decides the outcome, and the week in the fridge afterwards decides the rest. Made fresh and eaten the same day, this is one of the gentler foods on the axis.

Chicken broth contains moderate levels of oligosaccharides. The chicken contributes nothing here - meat carries no oligosaccharide. Everything on this axis comes from the aromatics, which is why a home stock without onion and garlic is a genuinely different product. This is a PREPARED food, and that is the difficulty on this axis: the oligosaccharides come from whatever went in - onion, garlic, a legume, an added fibre - not from a single plant that could be looked up. The level follows work on fructooligosaccharides in prepared and preserved foods for that reason. The survey behind this ranks by PLANT FAMILY rather than by food: the Compositae highest in total fructooligosaccharide, then the Allium species. A prepared food takes its place from whichever of those went into it - onion and garlic are Allium, artichoke and chicory are Compositae - and the survey names no prepared food itself.

Chicken broth contains only low levels of gluten. Chicken stock has flavour of its own, so it needs less help - but the commercial versions still thicken and body it out, and wheat flour is the usual way. Bones, water and vegetables is a recipe with nothing in it to check. Amounts vary by brand and recipe, so always check the label of the exact product.