Can I eat anything?
Food allergies are one of the most common types of allergies. The most usual allergens are milk, eggs, fruit or dried fruit and nuts. In fact, almost 45% of allergies in Spain are linked to fruit and vegetables. But is it possible to have an allergic reaction just by touching the article in question?
Around the world, nearly 520 million people could be suffering from food allergies. According to the World Allergy Organization, no country has reported a decrease in food allergies over the past 10 years. In Spain, two million citizens suffer from some kind of food allergy, specifically, around 8% of children under the age of 14 and 2-3% of adults. M. Carmen García, allergist from the Hospital Universitario HLA Moncloa, defines a food allergy as a reaction of the immune system that happens soon after having eaten a certain food or minimum amounts of it, or even after having touched or inhaled it.
Food allergy, she adds, varies according to age. “In the paediatric age group, the most common allergens are milk, eggs, fish and dried fruit and nuts. In adults, they are mainly fruit, vegetables and dried fruit and nuts,” she explains. Almost 45% of the allergies in our country are caused by fruit and vegetables. In fact, in Spain many people are sensitive to peaches.
Risk factors
Some allergic reactions to food occur immediately and others take hours to appear and cause symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, colic and diahrroea. The seriousness of a reaction will depend on many factors, linked both to the food allergy and to the person themself. For this reason, García believes that “the intensity of the allergic reaction is unforeseeable.” In many cases, the allergy is due to a genetic alteration, but even so, it can be prevented.
The most common treatment is usually to avoid eating or coming into contact with the food in question, but apart from this precaution, a series of co-factors have been identified, which, associated with eating the specific food, can induce the appearance of an allergic reaction or make it worse. Amongst these co-factors are “performing moderate-high intensity physical exercise after eating the food, prolonged fasting, menstruation or the prior or simultaneous drinking of alcohol or taking of anti-inflammatory medicines,” the allergist from the Hospital Universitario HLA Moncloa comments.
Finally, many people confuse food allergy with food intolerance. The main difference between the two is that the intolerance arises in the digestive tract, while the immune system is the main cause of an allergy.
