Posted by Sue Landsman on Dec.14, 2009

©iStockphoto.com - gbrundin

I’ve been lucky with my kids; we’ve always been able to eat anything without any issues. Meanwhile we’ve had friends who can’t eat peanuts or milk, and we’ve made more than one special birthday cake for the kids who couldn’t eat wheat. But when, on a lark, I had my naturopath test both myself and my daughter for food intolerance, I made a surprising discovery: my daughter was moderately sensitive to a whole range of things: gluten, soy, almonds, cranberries, pineapple, crab, egg. This puzzled me. Could the food sensitivities explain her minor health problems? If she had no major health problems, should I make the difficult effort to avoid all these things? How is a food intolerance different from a food allergy anyway, and how could I not know these things bothered her?

Allergies involve the immune system and it’s complicated defensive armies. With a food allergy, a specific food causes the body’s defense system to raise an alert, and provokes a battle against the foreign invader. The symptoms of an allergy are the results of the body’s mounting an attack. Most people are familiar with the severe examples of allergic reaction: rashes, chest pain, anaphylaxis, breathing problems. Allergy symptoms can range from mild to severe, and can often increase with exposure to a trigger. Food allergies are less common than food intolerances, and often run in families.

A food intolerance does not involve the immune system. Here, the digestive system is the key player. With a food intolerance, a person cannot properly digest a food; either the food irritates the digestive system, or does not break down completely. Lactose intolerance is a prime example of a food-sensitivity. Often, a food intolerance depends on the amount of the food eaten or the current state of digestive health. The obvious symptoms of food intolerance are digestive system upset, such as nausea, gas, cramps, diarrhea, or vomiting.

But poor digestion can also indirectly affect the immune system and the body’s proper functioning. If you’re not properly digesting your food, then you are not getting the nutrition you need. In addition, the undigested food will sit in your colon longer and allow toxins to be absorbed into your body. To make matters worse, the digestive system will try even harder to process what’s in it by borrowing enzymes (the proteins that do work) from the immune system, leaving the immune system less prepared to maintain your health.

It’s usually easy to tell the difference between a food allergy and a food intolerance because the food allergy will cause symptoms every time the food is eaten regardless of quantity. If you break out in hives whenever you eat an apple, you’ll be itching after a few bites, long before you’ve had a chance to digest any of it. A food intolerance usually takes a little while to show up after you’ve eaten a food, because it is a digestive issue. The consequence can also depend on how much you eat, and how often. You may be able to digest eggs once a week just fine, but any more just overloads your system.

Because food intolerances are not immediately obvious, they’re often hard to track, or to blame for any specific issues. If you’re feeling run-down and tired, how would you know whether the problem is in your digestive system? Many doctors aren’t used to dealing with the body holistically, and only look for direct cause and effect.

The best way to determine if you have a food sensitivity that affects your health is the most direct, but yet the most complicated way. Keep a food diary of what you eat when and how you feel. This will allow you to see if what you eat is possibly affecting your health. You can also take a blood test to identify food sensitivities, and this can be a useful guideline for what to be wary of. Without understanding how these foods really affect you though, it’s easy to ignore the warning and decide not to worry too much. With food sensitivities, you can get away with this for a while because there may not be any direct reaction, but it’s easy to lose track or not really notice how often you’re eating something, especially for a substance like gluten that shows up in a lot of things you may take for granted like breading, the oyster crackers you crumble in your soup, or meal sides like macaroni and cheese.

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Posted under Food, Nutrition & Recipes, Nutrition.