Salicylate analysis in 2017 does it help?

Foods reported as high in salicylate but which are reported as not causing strong reactions in most diet responders included green beans, green peas, mild avocado, just-ripe bananas, unpeeled Packham pears, unpeeled pink lady apples, and persimmons. The 2017 salicylate data has not made understanding which foods you are more likely to tolerate easier.

What is the problem here? Researchers good at doing careful biochemical analysis of chemical compounds are providing data on what they are analysing but the idea that this data relates to what causes reactions and what does not is just not consistent in some important ways.

Foods often reported as causing clear reactions in usual serve sizes in people established on a Low Chemical diet (low in additives, salicylates, amines and MSG and smells) but which were reported to be low in salicylate include include olives, and oil, tomato paste, sun dried tomato, and fresh tomatoes.

You can see that these results vary greatly from current practice and food sensitive people’s reports of tolerance. Reactions often reported over the last 30 to 40 years include clear production of gut pain, even migraine in adults, and in children, hyperactivity, noticeably immature behavior, irritability, mistakes when reading and adding numbers, aggression, night terrors, and eczema.

Some foods have been reported to cause reactions but are reported in this study to be low in salicylate. So you could trial these foods to see if they apply to you. They include Roma tomato, blueberries, chives, and basil.

The usual consistencies with other analyses include that most herbs and spice are high. Unfortunately, very common foods such as carrots and tomato sauce were not analysed.

You can look at the detail, and there is lots, in the research article:-

Naturally occurring dietary salicylates: A closer look at common Australian foods. Sreepurna Malakar, PR Gibson, JS Barrett, JG Muir. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis 57 (2017) 31–39.  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157516302241

What do these results mean? They means that salicylate content as analysed does not explain enough about the reactions people have. I have spent hours mulling over the results noting differences, including separate tables of salicylate in serve sizes. A serve size of dates is 96 gm which is 27 dates so the amount of salicylate is high. But a serve of sticky date pudding that has one date/serve can still be delicious!

What is important here? There is sufficient individual variation in what people tolerate that each person should test foods they want to try and so carry out a study of what happens to them, without deciding beforehand what they may react to. In doing this they can also use what has been found in clinical work. I have gathered together reported tolerances in thousands of food sensitive people into the Best Guess Food Guide of over 300 foods in my book Tolerating Troublesome Foods, 2014 edition. It provides a guide that is the “best guess” at this time and may be so for some time to come.