Food allergy facts

More about Food Allergies

Food intolerances remain an area of research due to the diversity of complaints, severity of symptoms and the increase in reporting of cases worldwide.

We’ve put together our list of TMI Testing food intolerance facts based on our 10+ years of working with nutritional therapists, helping people with intolerances identify triggers and assisting clients with elimination diets.

The understanding of food intolerances and to a certain extent allergies is growing all the time and evolving with further scientific research.

Common food allergens

Almost any food can potentially cause an allergic reaction, but there are certain foods that are responsible for most food allergies.

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Cereals containing gluten: wheat, rye, barley, oats
Eggs

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Fish
Crustaceans; prawns, crabs, lobster, crayfish, etc

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Peanuts
Soybeans

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Milk
Nuts; almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, brazil, etc

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Celery (including celeriac)
Mustard

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Sesame
Molluscs like clams, mussels, whelks, oysters, snails and squid

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Meats: some people are allergic to one type of meat and others to a range of meats; a common symptom of meat allergy is skin irritation.

Types of food allergies

There are 3 types of food allergy.

IgE-mediated food allergy which is the most common, triggered by an immune response producing an antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE). Symptoms occur a few seconds or minutes.

Non-IgE-mediated food allergy is an allergic reaction not caused by immunoglobulin E, but by other immune cells. This is often difficult to diagnose as symptoms take much longer to develop (up to several hours).

Mixed IgE and non-IgE-mediated food allergies can occur in some people.

Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/food-allergy/

Allergy statistics

General allergies are very common in the population. They’re thought to affect more than 1 in 4 people in the UK at some point in their lives. (Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/allergies/)
The least likely to suffer from allergies are pensioners with a 30% allergy rate among this group whereas women and younger adults (under 35) are the most likely to claim an allergy- around 50% (Foods Matter, 2010) Source: https://www.allergyuk.org/assets/000/001/369/Stats_for_Website_original.pdf?1505209830
In the last 20 years leading to 2012 there has been a 615% increase in the rate of hospital admissions for anaphylaxis (Turner PJ, 2015).
Almost a third of allergy sufferers have had to amend their lifestyles to reduce allergic reactions. Changes vary from increased cleaning habits (11%) to using special bedding (11%) (Foods Matter, 2010).
In the UK, it is estimated that the prevalence for food allergy is 7.1% in breast-fed infants, with 1 in 40 developing peanut allergy and 1 in 20 developing egg allergy (BSACI, 2011)
In the UK, the prevalence of tree-nut allergies is 1.76%