Low-histamine fish and seafood
| Food | Rating | Category | Published diets excluding it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crab · disputed | Fish and seafood | 3 of 10 | |
| Mussels · disputed | Fish and seafood | 3 of 10 | |
| Shrimp · disputed | Fish and seafood | 3 of 10 | |
| Squid · disputed | Fish and seafood | 3 of 10 | |
| Cod · disputed | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Salmon · disputed | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Tilapia · disputed | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Trout · disputed | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Anchovies | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Mackerel | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Sardines | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 | |
| Tuna | Fish and seafood | 9 of 10 |
Fish is the food group most closely tied to histamine, but the risk is concentrated in particular species and in how fish is handled. Histamine forms when bacteria convert histidine, an amino acid, into histamine. Tuna and mackerel, along with sardines and anchovies, have flesh rich in free histidine, so they can build up histamine quickly if they are not kept cold. Histamine poisoning from fish was long called scombroid poisoning for this reason, and European law sets histamine limits for fish from these histidine-rich families.
White fish such as cod is different. In a survey of fish sold in Spain, fresh white fish averaged 1.14 mg/kg of histamine across 31 samples, and 95% of samples had none detectable. Fresh oily fish averaged 3.27 mg/kg across 49 samples, low in most cases but with an outlier above 100 mg/kg. Canned and marinated fish averaged 10.03 mg/kg across 151 samples, with one can of sardines at 657.05 mg/kg. Most published low-histamine diets do not make these distinctions: nine of the ten in a 2021 review exclude fish and fish products as a group.
Two rules hold across all fish. First, histamine is heat-stable, so canning, grilling or frying cannot remove histamine that formed before. Second, time is what matters most: fish frozen soon after catch, or bought very fresh and eaten the same day, is the lowest-risk choice, while leftovers and canned fish carry the most. Smoked fish was not measured in the studies we use, and we treat it as higher until it is.
Our fish pages rate each species by its measurements where they exist and by its histidine family where they do not, and they always show the freshness variants separately, because the same fish can be a low or a high choice depending on its journey to your plate.
Sources
- 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
- 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
- European Commission. Commission Regulation (EC) No 2073/2005 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs. Official Journal of the European Union L 338, 2005. Link