Marieke Hendriksen, in our recent conversation, told me how her new junior researcher had “got an allergic reaction and ended up in A&E” as a result of eating too much fermented food. In the past, Marieke added, “because people ate so many fermented foods, they must have had a higher histamine tolerance.” That rang a distant bell for me, and this is the result.

Histamine is the chemical largely responsible for allergic reactions, which are caused by an allergen triggering a release of histamine from specific cells of the immune system. That process is fairly well understood. Histamine is also common in fermented foods as a result of micro-organisms converting histidine, an amino acid found in many proteins. As a result, histamine concentrations are higher in animal ferments – cheese, meats – than in plant ferments. Histamine intolerance is not an allergic reaction but rather a reaction caused by too much histamine in the diet.

Here’s the problem: if you search for “histamine fermentation” online, you find a slew of sites all echoing more or less the same stuff about the prevalence and symptoms of histamine intolerance, along with sure-fire ways to minimise it, lists of foods to avoid, lifestyle changes to make, etc., etc.

Search for “histamine intolerance” itself on, say, Wikipedia and the picture is somewhat different.

Despite the belief shared by several researchers that consuming histamine can lead to nonspecific health issues, the scientific proof to back this claim is both scarce and inconsistent, the underlying mechanisms are not understood and while several factors have been proposed for explaining the underlying mechanisms of these adverse reactions to histamine intake, no single hypothesis has gained solid scientific confirmation.

That in itself explains why there is so much online advice that is charitably best described as a lot more certain than the topic merits. Although Wikipedia and peer-reviewed publications explain how a deficiency in the enzymes that break down histamine could be overwhelmed by a high enough dose of histamine, or might be deficient in some individuals, the results of double-blind trials on self-identified histamine intolerant people are inconclusive at best, and as far as I am aware no enzyme differences have been detected between those people and others not intolerant of histamine.

Aware of the perils of online research, I turned to Sandor Katz’s magisterial The Art of Fermentation. No time to re-read the entire text, I went, naturally, to the index. Other toxins get a good mention, but histamine is completely absent.

From which I conclude that histamine intolerance is quite possibly not a thing at all. What, then, sent Marieke Hendriksen’s new junior researcher to the hospital? Maybe she really did eat so much fermented food that the histamines overwhelmed her breakdown enzymes. Maybe something else entirely. Marieke did warn us not to try this at home: “Don’t eat all your fermented reconstructions at once”. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, despite not being a doctor of medicine, it’ll probably be just fine.

“An anchovy, to get to an important point, is a larval sardine (Engraulis encrasicolus). Around Nice, anchovies are called poutines (not to be confused with fast-food from Quebec).”

This, from a writer I have long respected for their meticulous research, rang alarm bells. Nowhere, ever, have I come across the idea that an anchovy is a larval sardine. A sardine, I’ve always thought (known?) is a young pilchard. And an anchovy is … an anchovy. These days, though, you can’t be too sure, so I turned to the magisterial Mediteranean Seafood by the master, Alan Davidson (2nd edition, Penguin, 1981).

My worst fears, confirmed: Someone is Wrong on the Internet.

Davidson is clear. What people in Britain call a sardine is a young pilchard, Sardina pilchardus, though elsewhere many different species of small fish are called sardines.

He adds:

“Larval sardines and anchovies (p. 48) are known as poutine or poutina in the south of France, and bianchetti or gianchetti in parts of Italy.”

Could that be the source of the confusion? It is ambiguous. Are poutines larval sardines and larval anchovies, or are only the sardines larval?

In my opinion, that “larval” is misleading, because the larval stage for sardines and for anchovies is only a few millimetres long, simply floating along with other plankton. Perhaps the sentence would be clearer as “Anchovies and small sardines …”. At any rate, that’s how I read it.

Turning to page 48, Davidson correctly identifies the European anchovy as Engraulis encrasicolus and he offers a useful tip. “Note that the lower jaw projects markedly less than the upper one.”

Obligatory self-promotion: The Swedish Fish Conundrum (ansjovis are sprats, not anchovies) came up in 2024’s Christmas Special Sensual, Salty, and a Little Bit Spicy.

Quinoa is not a staple at our house. I like it a lot, but I don’t make it that often. If I did, I would probably already have negotiated a way through the ethical maze that confronts me. Should I buy quinoa from its homeland in South America, and if so should it be the morally superior stuff grown by small farmers on the altiplano of Peru and Bolivia, or the industrial stuff grown on the coast by greedy land barons cashing in on the mystique cultivated by the local people they despise?

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This time of year, approximately speaking, is ripe for investigating food and cultures, as in the episode Celebrating Passover and Easter. With Passover just behind and Easter just ahead, I’m happy to resurrect some more ancient posts.

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Somewhat sad to see Marion Nestle, with whom I almost always agree, linking, without question or comment, to an article in a pet-food trade journal which suggests that insect protein is a key solution to a sustainable pet food industry. The article contains some eye-opening numbers for the pet food business in the US and globally, as well as some dubious claims about pet health; they are not properly sourced, so I’m not going to bother to address them.

I do, however, take issue with this:

“In terms of sustainability, the key point is that this isn’t just greenwashing,” said Hobbs. “Insect protein in pet food truly has a significant positive impact.”

It is just greenwashing.

Hobbs is Aaron Hobbs, executive director of the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture (NACIA), so Mandy Rice-Davies applies. The key point, which neither he nor Marion Nestle seem to have appreciated, but which you will because you listened to the recent episode on insects as food (for people and their pets), is that the “waste” that insects are reducing is usually a feed product that could be given direct to livestock and, in some cases, people and their pets.

Premium-priced insect-based pet food might assuage the consciences of some pet owners, but it is unlikely to do anything at all for food waste.