Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is one of only four foods both reviews that narrowed the MAOI diet put under absolute restriction - with aged cheese, concentrated yeast extract and broad bean pods - and the load climbs the longer it ferments - which is the one thing a barcode cannot tell you. Pasteurised jars carry far less than raw refrigerated kraut, because heat stops the bacteria that were still producing amines. It is also one of the seven foods Gardner's review kept when it narrowed the MAOI diet to what the evidence supports — a list that dropped most of what had been on it and held on to this.

Sauerkraut is one of only four foods the standard MAOI assay singled out for absolute restriction, alongside aged cheese, yeast extract and broad bean pods. The lactic bacteria that sour the cabbage decarboxylate tyrosine as they go, and the longer the ferment the more there is.

Sauerkraut is cabbage, which is low, fermented into something that is not. Fermentation cuts both ways here: the bacteria consume some of the cabbage fructan, and they produce mannitol, a polyol, as they go. One family falls and another rises, which is why the level lands in the middle rather than at either end. Monash gives a SERVE THRESHOLD, which is a different object from a content. A threshold answers how much, and for grams per hundred the papers are the source, not the app.

Sauerkraut gains polyols during fermentation, which the raw cabbage did not carry. It is one of the few cases where processing creates the FODMAP rather than removing it.

Sauerkraut is cabbage that lactic bacteria have already worked on, and they consume the cabbage's oligosaccharides as they go - the fermentation does to the cabbage what the colon would otherwise do. What it produces instead is mannitol, which belongs to the polyol axis.

The cabbage is low and the fermentation does not create salicylate. Any added caraway or juniper does, so plain sauerkraut is the lower choice.

Sauerkraut is cabbage and salt, and cabbage is a low-nickel vegetable. Fermentation produces acid, and acid in a metal vessel would matter - which is why traditional kraut is made in stone or glass. The nickel here follows a survey of heavy metals in VEGETABLES. A vegetable takes up what its soil holds, so a figure of this kind describes the growing region as much as the plant.

Sauerkraut starts from cabbage, which is low, and fermentation does not create oxalate - bacteria make amines and acids, not plant minerals. If anything the brine draws some of the soluble fraction out of the leaf, and the brine is usually not eaten.