Is ackee high in nitrites?

What to know about ackee

Ackee is the one fruit on this site where ripeness is a safety rule rather than a taste preference. Unripe ackee contains hypoglycin A at roughly 100 to 111 mg per 100 g of aril, and eating it causes Jamaican vomiting sickness: violent vomiting followed by a profound crash in blood sugar, because the toxin blocks fatty acid oxidation and shuts down the liver pathway that keeps glucose up between meals. Severe cases progress to seizures, coma and death, and children are the most vulnerable. Once the pod ripens and splits open by itself on the tree, hypoglycin A in the aril falls away sharply to under 10 mg per 100 g, which is why properly ripened, properly cleaned ackee has been a Jamaican staple for centuries. The United States does not treat this casually either: FDA Import Alert 21-11 allows detention of ackee at the border unless the producer has qualified for the Green List, with 100 ppm hypoglycin A as the ceiling for imported product. On the ordinary food chemistry triggers ackee is quiet. It grades A for histamine, tyramine, gluten, lactose, free glutamates, sulfites, nitrites, nickel and nightshades, with a moderate C for salicylates. It also grades C for anti inflammatory value and C for DASH and Mediterranean patterns, which reflects how unusually fatty it is for a fruit rather than any chemical trigger.