DeLallo Pitted Green Olives

Yes, green olives like these are a high-histamine food. Olives are cured and brined before they reach the jar, and that curing process is exactly the kind of setup where histamine tends to build up.

Why delallo pitted green olives is rated high

Raw olives are far too bitter to eat, so they always go through a curing step, often a slow brine cure that relies on natural bacteria over weeks or months. That bacterial activity is the classic way histamine forms in a food, and it is baked into how olives are made, not something you can rinse or cook out. That is why olives of any color sit firmly in the high range for most people with histamine intolerance, and green ones are no exception.

What changes your risk

• Curing method — some olives are cured mostly in salt and lye and then packed, while others are genuinely lacto-fermented; the fermented ones tend to run higher, but you usually can't tell from the jar, so it's safest to treat all cured olives as high.
• Time in brine — the longer olives sit in their brine, the more chance bacteria have had to work, so a long-aged product is generally a bigger concern than a freshly-cured one.
• Rinsing — draining and rinsing off the brine removes surface salt and a little of what's floating in the liquid, but it does not remove the histamine already inside the olive.
• Storage after opening — once the jar is open and the olives sit in their liquid in the fridge, that's still a salty, low-oxygen environment where bacteria can keep ticking along, so an open jar isn't getting safer over time.
• Portion — a couple of olives carries less of a load than a big handful, but with a high-histamine food that only shifts the amount, not the underlying risk.

Lower-histamine alternatives

There isn't a truly low-histamine version of an olive, because curing is unavoidable, so the honest move is to reach for a different flavor entirely. If you're after that salty, savory hit in a salad or on a plate, try fresh cucumber, sliced radish, or roasted red pepper you've cooked yourself. For a briny snack feel, fresh mozzarella-style options are debated and not reliably safe, so a better bet is something like fresh cooked chicken with olive oil and fresh herbs. Note that capers, pickled vegetables, and anything fermented are not safer swaps here.

How to lower the risk

If you're cooking for others and olives are on the table, keep them in their own dish so they don't end up in a shared salad or sauce you were planning to eat. When you do buy them, a shorter-cured, mild green olive is generally milder than a heavily fermented one, though this is hard to verify from packaging. Store the jar cold and sealed, use clean utensils to avoid introducing bacteria, and don't leave olives sitting out at room temperature. For your own plate, olive oil is a genuinely low-histamine way to get that Mediterranean flavor without the cured-olive load.

Common questions

Are green olives lower in histamine than black olives?

Not reliably. Both green and black olives are cured before packing, and that curing is the source of the concern, so color isn't a good guide to histamine and both are best treated as high.

Does rinsing the olives make them okay to eat?

Rinsing washes off surface brine and salt but leaves the histamine that has already formed inside the olive, so it does not make them a low-histamine food.

Can I cook with olives to reduce the histamine?

No. Cooking can kill bacteria, but it does not break down histamine that has already built up during curing, so cooked olives are still high.

Is olive oil also high in histamine?

Olive oil is generally considered low-histamine and well tolerated by most people, which makes it a good way to get olive flavor without eating the cured fruit itself.