What is a food allergy?
Even the definition of this word is controversial. Let us start with adverse reactions to food.
There are:
- predictable reactions like toxins (e.g. histamines), pharmacological (e.g. alcohol, caffeine) biological contamination (e.g. salmonella)
- so called abnormal reactions. One is an aversion and the other is the intolerance. (a. metabolic defect like lactase deficiency, b. allergy and c. unknown cause.)
Here is ONE definition for allergies: “An allergy is an inappropriate and harmful response of the body’s defence mechanisms to substances that are normally harmless”. Some medical practitioners use the term
IMMUNE SENSITIVITY instead of
Allergy. Some alternative practitioners stayed with the old definition (1906) “…any change in the way the body responds to the environment. Different approaches to the meaning of words (Allergy/Intolerances/Hyper-Intolerances/Sensibilities) led also to different approaches to find appropriate
testing methods. The sufferer will become more and more confused when reading about IGE-MEDIATED ALLERGY or NON-IGE IMMUNE SENSITIVITY, IGA (IMMUNOGLOBULIN A), IGG or IGG4 (IMMUNOGLOGULIN G)
What we DO know is that the incidence of
food allergy is rising alarmingly. Up to 2% of the adult population have a true food allergy, and about 5% of young children.
