Fruits and tyramine: 75 foods rated

Here modern guidance corrects an old myth: banana PULP is low in tyramine and fine — it is the PEEL that is high, which is why the ban only ever made sense for dishes cooked with the skin on. An overripe, blackening banana is the case to watch, since amines build as it ripens.

• Gardner et al., J Clin Psychiatry 1996
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006

Citrus was on the original MAOI diet and came off it decades ago - grapefruit's measured tyramine is too low to matter. Its famous drug interaction is real and entirely separate: it inhibits the enzymes that clear many medicines, which has nothing to do with amines.

• Gardner et al., J Clin Psychiatry 1996, the review that narrowed the MAOI diet
• Shulman KI et al., J Clin Psychopharmacol 9 (1989)

Sun-dried tomatoes spend days warm, moist and open to the air - the exact condition under which amines form - and the drying then concentrates what was made. The oil they are packed in preserves them afterwards; it does nothing about what happened in the sun.

• EFSA Journal 2011
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006

Avocado appears on older MAOI restriction lists, and the modern assay of a hundred foods is what softened that: an ordinary ripe avocado is low. Overripe or blackened flesh is a different measurement, as it is for any fruit that keeps ripening after picking.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Cherry tomatoes carry little tyramine. They are sold ripe and eaten fresh, with no curing step; ripening softens a fruit, but it is bacteria, given time and moisture, that build the amine.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Chilli peppers carry little tyramine, fresh or dried, and they are eaten in pinches rather than portions - two reasons the level stays where it is. A fermented chilli sauce is a different food.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Dried apricots carry little tyramine. Drying concentrates what the fruit already held, and a fresh apricot held very little; the sulphites used to keep them orange are a separate question.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Prunes carry little tyramine. The amine is built by bacteria from tyrosine while a food ages or ferments, and drying a plum does neither - it takes away the water those bacteria would need.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Goji berries carry little tyramine. They reach the shelf dried, and drying is not fermenting: it removes the water bacteria need rather than giving them time in it.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Mandarin is low in tyramine, though citrus carries related adrenergic amines - bitter orange in particular has been studied for its synephrine. Sweet citrus like this one does not have the same profile.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Pineapple carries little tyramine. Fresh or canned, nothing in the way it is prepared ferments it - a pineapple left to go soft is spoiling, which is a different process from curing.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Plantain is low in tyramine, but the skin is not - older restriction lists named banana peel specifically, and the flesh was carried along with it by mistake. Eat the fruit and leave the skin, which is what everyone does anyway.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Strawberries carry little tyramine. They are eaten within days of picking and never cured, which is the step that builds the amine; a mouldy punnet is a spoilage question and not a tyramine one.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Sultanas carry little tyramine. The grape becomes a tyramine question when it is fermented into wine, and a raisin is the dried fruit rather than the fermented one.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content

Tomato carries little tyramine. Ripening raises its sugars and softens it, but the amine needs bacteria working on protein over time, which a fresh tomato has never given them.

• Sen N.P., Journal of Food Science 34 (1969) 22-26, per-food tyramine content