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<p>Pretty impressive page. I sent it to my wife and daughter. I don’t think that my daughter has problems with apples as everyone else in the family eats them without problems - probably something else. But it was interesting to see so many volatile chemicals in a simple apple.</p>
<p>"Most food “allergies” not real </p>
<p>Around 80% are just imagined. Everyone needs to feel so special."</p>
<p>Tell it to a 5 years old who would have numerous ear infections. Not a single one since the age of 6. She is 20 years old now. Had allergy test and removed “allergy” items for the rest of her life with very successful results. Oh, no, those screams and liquid pouring down her cheek from her ear were not imaginary at all. She had a ear infection every single time her nose start dripping, what an ordeal it was. And since then, she has huge earache flying, something left over from her infections. She was on airplane once at 4 before they start, she did not have any problem one time in her life. Sorry, none of it imaginary either.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is too much focus on the “imagined”, “for attention”, and “feeling special” part? Within the medical community, I think the distinction is more about whether it is Ig E mediated ( which is a relatively well understood mechanism with a predictable course and management) , and relatedly, whether it is acutely life threatening.</p>
<p>Many children have earaches at that age. I had them for a few years right around then and they are very painful and then you grow out of them. What that has to do with food allergies I don’t know. The point was most cases of claimed food allergy are simply not true. All the anecdotes in the world don’t change the numbers and makes it sem this is a particularly afflicted cohort… And many of the problems with children CAN be attributed to an over-scrubbed over controlled environment when young. Or as the articles said–a little dirt won’t hurt and probably helps.</p>
<p>Dirt - and while we’re at it, get rid of all vaccines and penicillan. Give our bodies some diseases to fight off while young, and our immune systems won’t be going crazy by the time we’re age 10.</p>
<p>And the babies that die because they can’t fight off those diseases? They can be relatives of the naysayers.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree that we are overdiagnosing and overtreating ouerselves.
Not all allergies are the same. Some are life threatening, some are just annoying, but can be annoying to the point of making you really miserable.</p>
<p>As for giving us back disease fighting power - do you know how difficult it is to buy a liquid soap that is not anibacterial - everything is becomig antibacterial nowdays. And the antibacterial hand washing solutions are doing us more harm than good.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying to get rid of all the vaccines!</p>
<p>Although all mammalian infants drink their mothers’ milk, humans are the only mammals that drink milk as adults. But most people – about 60 percent and primarily those of Asian and African descent – stop producing lactase, the enzyme required to digest milk, as they mature. People of northern European descent, however, tend to retain the ability to produce the enzyme and drink milk throughout life.</p>
<p>Sherman and former Cornell undergraduate student Gabrielle Bloom '03, now a graduate student at the University of Chicago, compiled data on lactose intolerance (the inability to digest dairy products) from 270 indigenous African and Eurasian populations in 39 countries, from southern Africa to northern Greenland. Their findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of Evolution and Human Behavior.</p>
<p>On average, Sherman and Bloom found that 61 percent of people studied were lactose intolerant, with a range of 2 percent in Denmark and 100 percent in Zambia. They also found that lactose intolerance decreases with increasing latitude and increases with rising temperature, and especially with the difficulty in maintaining dairy herds safely and economically. </p>
<p>[lactose</a> intolerance and dairy herding](<a href=“Home | Cornell Chronicle”>Home | Cornell Chronicle)</p>
<p>Not sure if lactose intolerance falls under the category of allergy but it’s much more common than the 8% number in the OP’s study.</p>
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<p>Lactose intolerance is not the same thing as an allergy. People who are lactose intolerant lack the enzyme needed to digest dairy products. They are not allergic to the dairy.</p>
<p>I can’t understand why people are bothered by other people taking steps to avoid foods that cause problems for them, whether they are “true” allergies or not. </p>
<p>S2 avoids nuts because ingesting just a trace of certain kinds will, at best, buy him a trip to the ER and a couple of days lost and, at worst, kill him.</p>
<p>Other people do not have “true” allergies, but clearly certain foods cause serious problems - stomach upset, vomiting, mouth sores, etc. Why does anyone care if they refer to their problem as an “allergy” either because they don’t understand the medical distinction between an immune-mediated reaction and a non-immune-mediated reaction or because they want to make sure that their questions are treated seriously? </p>
<p>My friend avoids cilantro like the plague, and closely questions waiters in Mexican restaurants. Eating cilantro will not kill her, and it will not give her cramps or make her vomit - it will “only” make the entire dinner taste like aluminum foil. Is that not a good enough reason to be sure it is not in her food, in some people’s minds?</p>
<p>There are plenty of good reasons for people to avoid certain foods, and they all deserve respect.</p>
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<p>From a medical treatment perspective the distinction **might **be important. As I said earlier, though, in my viewpoint, for all practical purposes, allergies and sensitivities are basically treated the same way: avoidance. Exception might be for lactose intolerant folks who don’t want to give up their cheese or ice cream. Those people can take Lactaid or something similar to help avoid their uncomfortable GI symptoms.</p>
<p>But if eating certain fruits gave me mouth sores or other foods made me vomit or feel horrible in some other way, the obvious solution would be to not eat those foods. And I would probably not even miss a food that had made me feel that crummy.</p>
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<p>Yes, when she’s cooking. No, when I’m cooking, and if she is despicable enough to complain that she is allergic to cilantro when she just doesn’t like it, she should stop right now. People should be eager to accommodate their guests’ true dietary problems, but if too many whiners take advantage of a friend’s or a business’ generosity to claim a non-existent allergy just to avoid some food they don’t like, people are going to stop accommodating real allergies. If lying wolf-criers talk about pretend allergies, people will start noticing that “allergic” people actually don’t have the reactions they claim they have, and real allergy patients will suffer from it.</p>
<p>Going back to page one, the OP’s post was only about how the skin prick test is not a reliable test of whether or not someone has a food allergy. Apparently, there are false positives, but doctors and patients are reluctant to have the patient eat a food that they suspect is causing a food allergy.</p>
<p>All this tempest in a teapot about the skin prick test? Most people wouldn’t even have the test done unless they had ALREADY had a bad reaction to a food. </p>
<p>The post also said that “only 8%” of children have food allergies. That’s a huge number!</p>
<p>The easiest thing to do if personal, is just to let someone know if they have a problem with something. If you’re the host, just ask about issues when you do the invitation.</p>
<p>With restaurants, you take your changes. Chain restaurants sometimes list the ingredients that they use so that you can avoid questioning your server when there. Some web-oriented restaurants do this so that save you time in deciding on what you will want and also saves the restaurant time when you are there in that they don’t have to find the list of ingredients and recite them to you.</p>
<p>BCEagle, I also have the same reaction to mangos and have since found out that they are related to poison ivy: [Poison</a> Mango?](<a href=“http://chemistry.about.com/b/2008/07/14/poison-mango.htm]Poison”>Is It Okay to Eat Mango Skin?)
I am allergic to poison ivy and get the same itcy bumps (filled with puss, an attractive look) from contact with mango skin. I’m not allergic to the fruit, just to the skin.
Is your D allergic to poison ivy?</p>
<p>She’s never been exposed to poison ivy. We have mangoes but rather infrequently.</p>
<p>OK, I’m going to admit that like the OP I am very cranky about people’s food sensitivities. It’s been my experience that the people (all women, it turns out) with sensitivities have some kind of food neuroses and the sensitivity is always something really obscure (mercury,–uh, yeah, we’re all “sensitive” to mercury). They also love to go on and on about it and if you ask a solicitous question, it can be the topic of conversation for the next half hour. Most of their information comes from some kind of nutrition “consultant” who then prescribes all kinds of wacky treatments (which can be conveniently purchased at their office!). I find it all pretty tiresome. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I know from allergies, having suffered from them all my life. But I do not make them the centerpiece of my personality. It’s also my experience that those who have true life-threatening allergies seldom are the ones to make a big deal about it.</p>
<p>Another pet peeve is that there is so much misinformation about real allergies – like that some dogs are “hypoallergenic”, which is completely bogus. </p>
<p>OK, end of rant.</p>
<p>Just got back from the bookstore and there are several magazines for the “food hyper-sensitive”. At least somebody is making a buck off these folks.</p>
<p>More on the rise of allergies</p>
<p>[Too</a> Clean? Fight Against Germs Fuels Allergy Increase | LiveScience](<a href=“http://www.livescience.com/health/070914_too_clean.html]Too”>Too Clean? Fight Against Germs Fuels Allergy Increase | Live Science)</p>
<p>I have a friend who vomits when she eats garlic. Whenever we go out to lunch, she has to cross-examine the waitstaff. And if they lie to her or just mislead her or just don’t know, she knows if garlic is in the dish right away.</p>
<p>And garlic is in everything!!</p>
<p>I understand this is a sensitive subject, but I can’t help but adding my (MD) husbands favorite response to my kids somatic complaints is “rub some dirt on it…”</p>