Low-histamine breakfast cereals

Boxed breakfast cereal is one of the few packaged foods with direct measurements. A University of Barcelona team tested eight samples of breakfast cereal sold in Spain, listed as corn and chocolate cereals, and none had detectable histamine, tyramine or cadaverine. Putrescine averaged 0.32 mg/kg, among the lowest figures in the team's tables, and another study collected in their 2018 review found 2 to 2.2 mg/kg in ten samples. Across 28 cereal samples pooled in the team's 2020 review, histamine averaged 0.12 mg/kg, and no sample had more than 0.89 mg/kg. Oats, the base of porridge, granola and muesli, had no histamine either.

The table does not split corn cereals from chocolate ones, so corn flakes here are "measured as a food group". Chocolate itself had no detectable histamine in 15 samples, but six of the ten published low-histamine diets in the team's 2021 review exclude it, so chocolate cereals sit one step higher.

Granola and muesli were not measured, and their ingredients are the reason they are rated 1 rather than 0. Nuts had no detectable histamine in 47 samples in the 2021 survey, but a 2020 summary of 41 nut samples found histamine in some, up to 11.86 mg/kg. Nuts also carry putrescine and spermidine, amines broken down by the same enzyme as histamine, and two of the ten diets exclude nuts. Dried fruit was not measured in any of our sources. The fresh fruits it is made from mostly had no histamine, but drying removes water, and the 2018 review explains that when food loses water during cooking, the amines in it become more concentrated, so fresh figures do not carry over.

What goes in the bowl counts too. Milk had no detectable histamine in five samples, and plain yogurt none in five, although four of the ten diets exclude yogurt. Breakfast cereals themselves are not on the 2021 chart of foods the diets exclude. Each page lists the measurements, the sources and the forms that were not tested.

Sources

1. Sánchez-Pérez S, Comas-Basté O, Rabell-González J, Veciana-Nogués MT, Latorre-Moratalla ML, Vidal-Carou MC. Biogenic Amines in Plant-Origin Foods: Are They Frequently Underestimated in Low-Histamine Diets? Foods 7(12):205, 2018. doi:10.3390/foods7120205
2. Comas-Basté O, Sánchez-Pérez S, Veciana-Nogués MT, Latorre-Moratalla M, Vidal-Carou MDC. Histamine Intolerance: The Current State of the Art. Biomolecules 10(8):1181, 2020. doi:10.3390/biom10081181
3. Sánchez-Pérez S, Comas-Basté O, Veciana-Nogués MT, Latorre-Moratalla ML, Vidal-Carou MC. Low-Histamine Diets: Is the Exclusion of Foods Justified by Their Histamine Content? Nutrients 13(5):1395, 2021. doi:10.3390/nu13051395