Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

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For my paleo peeps who have problems with histamines, I presume there's nothing magical about grass fed beef vs. conventional. From a histamine perspective, beef is beef, right?
After reading up on the subject, on paper at least, I'd suspect that beef should be avoided (grassed or otherwise) because it's intentionally aged about 3 weeks. Then, when you factor in travel and logistics, beef could be a month old by the time you see it on the supermarket shelves.

In contrast, chicken is NOT intentionally aged, so it's is pretty much 3-11 days old by the time you see on your shelves.

Is that borne out in your real world experience?

Thanks, Mike

flag	asked May 24 at 12:00 CaveMan_Mike 4,633●13●51

BTW, is there a good histamine intolerance support group on the web somewhere? (I found one, but it gets like 3 posts/year). – CaveMan_Mike May 24 at 18:19

Kelly · Answer 1 · 2012-05-24 13:40:14Z UTC

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Check with your sources. I get most of my beef and lamb frozen from the farms. Since they butcher as needed, I don't think they age the beef much before freezing. I've never had a problem eating grass-fed meat purchased that way, like I have buying unfrozen from a grocery store.

answered May 24 at 13:40

Kelly
3,773●1●5●19

Thanks Kelly. According to Mr. Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… pretty much all beef would be aged or it would be very tough. Ironically, fancy steaks at premium steak houses would be aged longer. That does seem to correlated to my recollection of particularly bad reactions going to the local fancy steak place. Good thing I don't make that a habit !!! – CaveMan_Mike May 24 at 14:26

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That does make sense. However, there's aged and "aged". Buying it frozen direct from the farm seems to have no issues for me. Start talking to the farmers. Also, I always rinse meat before cooking, as I read that histamines on raw meat tend to form at the surface. – Kelly May 24 at 15:05

Roberto · Answer 2 · 2012-05-24 13:41:58Z UTC

Dear Mike, I am histamine intolerant and I find that beef in general is not that big of a problem. In that context though lamb would be better in terms of freshness (for chicken it seems that the skin is high in histamine).

As far as I understand though (and from my experience), histamines are formed much more quickly when the proteins are cooked (such as in leftovers). Also sometimes grass fed could even be worse as it is often sold in vacuum packs that should be avoided (the meat is very old in this case). Plain grass-fed versus conventional I am not sure there would be a difference if treated the same way.

Histamine intolerance is really annoying. Also I do not seem to react the same way to histamine in different foods, i.e. I get more mouth canker sores with tomatoes or eggplant, while I get HUGELY bloated with smoked salmon or redwine (and in need for a toilet.. quickly). Some other times I get hitchy. When I was a kid I used to get severe urticaria (that's when I was diagnosed actually).

Histamines and Grass Fed Beef . . .

2 Answers