Meat and tyramine: 27 foods rated

Liver is the classic non-fermented exception: dense in protein and quick to degrade, it becomes tyramine-rich as soon as it is no longer perfectly fresh. Old MAOI diets banned it outright; modern guidance is narrower - fresh liver cooked the day you buy it is the low-risk form, stored liver is not.

• EFSA Journal 2011
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006
• Villanueva Valero et al., Food Sci Technol Int 11 (2005), amines during storage of vacuum-packaged kidney, liver and spleen

Chicken liver degrades faster than beef liver, and degradation is what builds tyramine - it is smaller and softer - and it is usually sold as several livers pooled in one tub, so one badly handled piece is in with the rest. Pâté compounds it: blended, cooked, then kept open in the fridge for days.

• EFSA Journal 2011
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006
• Villanueva Valero et al., Food Sci Technol Int 11 (2005), amines during storage of vacuum-packaged kidney, liver and spleen

Chorizo is fermented like salami and then dried, and the paprika that defines it changes the colour and nothing else here. Hanging time is the lever: a soft cooking chorizo of a few weeks is far below a hard cured one of several months. Latorre-Moratalla built a distribution from 474 dry fermented sausages and Spanish consumption: a meal delivers 6.2 mg of tyramine on average, which is negligible for most people and a 34 per cent chance of passing the 6 mg safe threshold for anyone taking an MAOI.

• EFSA Journal 2011 (tyramine and histamine in fermented foods)
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006
• Latorre-Moratalla M et al., Food Chem Toxicol 99 (2017) 78-85, tyramine and histamine exposure from dry fermented sausages

Dry fermented sausage is the one tyramine food with a full probabilistic risk assessment behind it - 474 sausages against national consumption data - and that assessment exists precisely because the levels reach the range that matters for MAOI patients. Both the fermentation and the drying that follows add to it. A probabilistic estimate across 474 of these sausages puts a meal at 6.2 mg of tyramine and 1.39 mg of histamine on average — negligible risk for a healthy person, a 34 per cent chance of passing the MAOI threshold, and an estimated 7,000 people per million with histamine intolerance who could react.

• Latorre-Moratalla M et al., Food Chem Toxicol 99 (2017) 78-85, tyramine and histamine exposure from dry fermented sausages

Pancetta is cured for weeks rather than months and is almost always cooked before eating, which puts it below prosciutto - a shorter cure gives the bacteria less time to build tyramine. Cooking does not lower what is already there, but a shorter cure means less of it to begin with.

• EFSA Journal 2011 (tyramine and histamine in fermented foods)
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006

Prosciutto is salted and air-dried for twelve to thirty-six months with no starter culture and no deliberate fermentation - salt and time and nothing else. Time alone is enough to build tyramine: three years of enzymes and native bacteria produce plenty. The months on the label are the number to read.

• EFSA Journal 2011 (tyramine and histamine in fermented foods)
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006

Salami is fermented on purpose and then dried, which concentrates what the bacteria made - two operations pushing the same way, which is why salami measures above the dry-cured hams. How the fermentation is started matters less than you would hope: industrial production adds a selected starter culture, a traditional salami relies on the bacteria already in the meat and the room, and the traditional route is the less predictable of the two rather than the safer. Cooking will not reduce it: tyramine is heat-stable. Latorre-Moratalla put figures on who that matters to. Across 474 dry fermented sausages and Spanish eating habits, a meal delivers on average 6.2 mg of tyramine and 1.39 mg of histamine — negligible risk for a healthy person, but a 34 per cent chance of passing the 6 mg safe threshold for someone taking an MAOI, and an estimated 7,000 people per million with histamine intolerance who could react after eating them.

• EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards, EFSA Journal 2011
• Suzzi G et al., Int J Food Microbiol 2003
• Latorre-Moratalla M et al., Food Chem Toxicol 2017

Bacon is brined for days rather than cured for months, and it is cooked - so its tyramine sits at the bottom of the cured-meat group. The versions that climb are the dry-cured and the long-smoked, which are a different product sold under the same word.

• EFSA Journal 2011 (tyramine and histamine in fermented foods)
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006

Minced beef is the same meat with the surface area multiplied - mincing turns the inside of a joint into surface, and surface is where the bacteria that build tyramine work. It is the reason mince has a shorter use-by date than the steak it came from, and the reason it sits here while the steak does not.

• EFSA Journal 2011
• McCabe-Sellers et al., J Food Compos Anal 2006
• Villanueva Valero et al., Food Sci Technol Int 11 (2005), amines during storage of vacuum-packaged kidney, liver and spleen

Beef tongue is low fresh. Measurements of chilled meat show free amino acids rising first and amines following - so the clock starts before anything smells wrong, and offal runs faster than muscle.

Chicken heart is fresh offal and low as sold, but it is the category where amines climb fastest in chilled storage. Cook it the day you buy it and the question does not arise.

Tyramine forms while a sausage cures, and morcilla is cooked instead. The EFSA's review puts biogenic-amine formation on fermentation and ripening - which is the step this sausage skips.

• EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (2011), risk-based control of biogenic amine formation in fermented foods, EFSA Journal 9(10):2393

Venison is low fresh, and game carries a specific caveat here: hanging to tenderise is controlled ageing, and controlled ageing is how tyramine is made in meat. How long it hung is a question the label does not answer.