Dietary tyramine load

Dietary tyramine load. Food that carries pressor amines produced by bacterial decarboxylation during ageing or fermentation. Harmless when gut and liver MAO-A destroy it. Not harmless when that enzyme is blocked.

Dietary L-dopa load. Food carrying levodopa, which is converted to dopamine and noradrenaline. This is why broad-bean PODS are on the MAOI list — the mechanism is L-dopa, not tyramine, and the distinction matters because it changes which part of the plant is the problem.

What acts on it

• Aged and mature cheese — provides, strong
  Walker et al. measured wide variation: many aged cheeses well above 6 mg per serving, some samples far higher, with the same named cheese varying between samples. Variability is the hazard — you cannot tell by looking.
• Cured, dried and fermented meat — provides, strong
  Fermented and air-dried sausages are consistently high. Fresh meat is not a source; spoiled or improperly stored meat is.
• Soy sauce and fermented soy — provides, variable
  Highly variable between products and brands. Ordinary soy sauce in a normal serving is usually modest; fermented soybean pastes and fermented bean curd can be high.
• Yeast extract and brewer's yeast — provides, strong
• Tap (draught) and unpasteurised beer — provides, variable
  Bottled/canned commercial beer: low, and two standard drinks are generally regarded as acceptable in modern MAOI guidance. Tap, cask and home-brewed beer: unpredictable and occasionally high. Tailor et al. re-analysed the classic phenelzine + tap beer hypertensive case and confirmed pressor amines in the beer.
• Sauerkraut, kimchi and fermented vegetables — provides, moderate
• Broad bean (fava) PODS — provides, moderate
  The mechanism is levodopa content in the pod, converted to dopamine and noradrenaline. The shelled bean itself is a much smaller concern. Stating this correctly is the difference between a workable diet and a needlessly restrictive one.
• Anything aged, fermented, pickled, smoked or spoiled — provides, variable
  Tyramine is produced by bacterial decarboxylation of tyrosine. Freshness is the variable that matters; a food that was low last week can be high after poor storage.
• Mucuna pruriens (L-dopa) — provides, strong
  L-dopa is decarboxylated to dopamine and onward to noradrenaline. With a monoamine oxidase inhibitor present the pressor response is not destroyed, and that is a documented hypertensive hazard — the same mechanism that puts broad-bean pods rather than broad beans on the MAOI list. Mucuna delivers far more L-dopa than any food does.
• Cacao / chocolate — provides, weak
  Chocolate appears on older MAOI diet lists. The revised tyramine literature puts its content low enough that it is no longer generally restricted, and the honest statement is that the restriction was relaxed rather than that it was always wrong.

What is affected by it

• Nothing in this dataset.

Last reviewed 2026-09-09. All interaction pages.