Is elderberry high in nitrites?

Watch for

• Raw elderberries are not a snack berry.The leaves, stems, bark and unripe green fruit carry the highest load of cyanogenic glycosides, and even ripe raw berries commonly cause nausea, vomiting and cramps in quantity. Heat is what makes them safe.
• The incident everyone cites is a 1983 gathering in Monterey County, California, where juice was pressed from elderberry bunches together with their leaves and branches.Eight people were flown to hospital with vomiting, cramps and weakness. Blood cyanide later tested normal, so the exact toxin was never pinned down, but the practical lesson held: use the ripe berries only, and cook them.
• Graded B on both histamine content and histamine liberation, so elderberry is borderline rather than clean.Fermented forms are a different question entirely: elderberry wine and a cordial left to age are a far bigger histamine load than a freshly made syrup.
• Salicylate B and oxalate B, both mild but not nil, which matters if you are stacking several fruits a day on a strict salicylate or oxalate protocol.
• FODMAP grades for elderberry are unrated in our data, and most people meet it as a commercial syrup or gummy that is mostly sugar or glucose syrup.That sugar load is its own gut trigger and is easy to mistake for the berry.