"While we found that one in 10 adults have food allergy, nearly twice as many adults think that they are allergic to foods, while their symptoms may suggest food intolerance or other food related conditions," says lead author Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, from Lurie Children's, who also is a Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It is important to see a physician for appropriate testing and diagnosis before completely eliminating foods from the diet. If food allergy is confirmed, understanding the management is also critical, including recognizing symptoms of anaphylaxis and how and when to use epinephrine."
[...] "We were surprised to find that adult-onset food allergies were so common," says Dr. Gupta. "More research is needed to understand why this is occurring and how we might prevent it."
The study data indicate that the most prevalent food allergens among U.S. adults are shellfish (affecting 7.2 million adults), milk (4.7 million), peanut (4.5 million), tree nut (3 million), fin fish (2.2 million), egg (2 million), wheat (2 million), soy (1.5 million), and sesame (.5 million).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday January 06 2019, @06:59AM (5 children)
Don't care if it's officially an allergy or what, it's the fact that I get sick if I eat it that matters.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday January 06 2019, @08:25AM (4 children)
That's fine, that's called a "food sensitivity" or a "food intolerance" - but it's something completely different from an allergy. Food sensitivity can have you sitting on the toilet for a day after eating something. A food allergy can be life threatening.
Practically speaking, a food sensitivity means "don't order that off the menu". A food allergy means that the kitchen has to practice clean-room techniques, to completely separate your food from any trace of contamination. This may not seem like a difference to you, the customer, but it is a huge difference to the people serving you.
Just as an example: I know a guy fairly well, who is head-chef in a restaurant. In his (as in many) restaurants, practically everything has butter in it, or is cooked in butter. Butter is everywhere in the kitchen. A guy comes in, warns the waiter that he has a serious dairy allergy. Clean room time: for this guys order, every single items has to be specially prepped in single portions, using olive oil or other substitutes, using freshly washed pots and pans and utensils. A huge effort, massively disruptive, and...at the end of the meal, the guy orders a cheese platter for dessert. The chef had to be talked out of "visiting" the customer personally...
Because there are so many nitwits with fake allergies, it's easy for the restaurant to brush them off - right up until a real allergy lands someone in the hospital.
Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves, because I've seen it too many times...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @08:43AM
Visiting my ass. He would simply have the cheese platter "specially seasoned."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:35AM
That wouldn't work for me, my personal kryptonite is egg..microscopic traces make me ill (hello toilet my old friend, it's days on you that I'll now spend...with apologies to Simon&Garfunkel) larger quantities then it's anaphylaxis.
This crap hit me in my mid-teens, one day I could eat eggs...the next, it was hospital time after eating a bit of a boiled one...and here we are, 40 years of preparing my own food later..
I do not eat out, as I cant risk it, and I do not regard it as either reasonable or fair to expect any public eatery to minimise the chances of cross-contamination by implementing the near clinical separation of pots, pans and utensils I have at home for my use alone, and also to have a separate cleaning regime for them as well (I learned *that* lesson the hard way early on)
I'm not alone, all the people I know with serious food allergies are quite paranoid about their food and tend not to eat anything prepared by anyone but themselves/SOs.
If I was a restaurateur, I'd display a very prominent notice detailing all the ingredients used in the kitchens both the entrance and on the menu, if someone with an allergy or intolerance to any of them still insists on ordering then I'd hit them with a liability waiver (lawyer drafted and approved) to be signed and witnessed before proceeding.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 06 2019, @01:08PM (1 child)
Seriously? The "average" restaurant couldn't possibly clean room their kitchen at a moment's notice. Some may find it impossible to do on a week's notice, given that they probably lack the training. I think that for something like that, you need to have prior knowledge of the restaurant, or call ahead to make arrangements.
I mean, really seriously - if my life DEPENDS ON never passing a single drop of butter (or similar substance) between my lips, damn if I'm going to walk in off the street, and just casually mention to a wait staff that I'm allergic to dairy, or nuts, or fish, or rape seed oil, or peanust (which are not technically nuts after all), or whatever.
As for your friend visiting the allergy guy who orders a cheese platter - I'm right with him. If I'm standing in the way of him reaching for the chef's knife, I'll pick it up and hand it to him. I'm helpful, like that. ;^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @12:34AM
If I'm standing in the way of him reaching for the chef's knife, I'll pick it up and hand it to him. I'm helpful, like that. ;^)
Uh oh, don't let that crazy girl, what's her name?, haiku susuki? Don't let her see this post! Actually do tell her about it. Her reaction will be priceless!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @07:31AM (17 children)
God damn precious snowflakes. I mean, for fuck sakes, our ancestors fed on wheat for thousand and thousands of years, and these millenial fucks bitching about "gluten allergy." as if it's some kinda fashion thing.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 06 2019, @08:09AM (7 children)
I tend to agree. But I found a couple years ago that eating more than a small handful of almonds made my throat swell and my tongue itch. Nothing too severe, just uncomfortable with restricted airway. Never had any problem with any food before. Cooked seems fine though.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:07AM (1 child)
That could be the bugs in them. Fun experiment, take a handful of raw almonds and put them in a container. In a few weeks a small grub will crawl out of each and every kernel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @01:19PM
Why is this troll? Offtopic maybe, but if you have ever left some raw almonds around you will have seen the grubs come out of them. I think they are the larvae of whatever pollinates the nuts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 06 2019, @01:21PM (4 children)
One of the few things that I know about allergies is, you might live to any age at all, and never have a problem with - whatever it is. Then, WHAM! Out of the blue, you have developed an allergy.
The allergy that I was closest to, was a co-worker on construction. George was an older black guy, who subcontracted the actual finishing of concrete for almost all of our work. Our crew and his would get into the mud, shoulder to shoulder, doing whatever it took to place the mud. When George was happy with placement, he and his crew took over, and finished. Old dude was as good at his work as anyone you ever met. One hot summer day, his crew showed up at the job, but no George. Odd - this has never happened before . . .
Learned that George had gone to the emergency room the evening before, with a variety of symptoms - skin peeling, white spots, itching and pain. The following day, we had another pour, and George showed up with his crew. Before we finished that pour, one of his guys was packing George into a truck, to go back to the emergency room. A different, more experienced, doctor quickly told George that his concrete working days were over.
https://www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/cement-guidance.html [osha.gov]
https://www.hexarmor.com/posts/concrete-irritation-burns-and-dermatitis [hexarmor.com]
While this is not a food allergy, I've been told that all allergies are alike in this respect.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday January 06 2019, @03:34PM (3 children)
Epoxies are like that too. You can do fiberglass work for decades and one day, outta nowhere, hives (or worse), and you can never be around uncured epoxy again.
There are some really exotic aviation paints that are like that; common belief (maybe not true) is everyone exposed to specific uncured paints will eventually become allergic to that specific paint chemistry, hence the high pay, partially because wearing space suits sux when working, and partially because careers will by necessity be short.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 06 2019, @06:19PM
This happened to me when I bought an old boat on which I did a lot of repairs using polyester resin -- the smallest contact with that substance (but not the fumes) now causes hundreds of little water blisters to break out all over the region of contact, which harden, turn scaly and peel off eventually. This carried over to my 3D printing -- I discovered that HIPS filament fumes cause a sunburn like reaction to any exposed skin. The filament itself or the finished object cause no reaction, in this case it is only the fumes.
Fortunately for me, it's just these two things and because they are both hobby related, I can just avoid them.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:28PM
Allergy or are these persistent chemicals that build up in fat cells or the liver or wherever until they reach a toxic level? It would be interesting to see a study on this sort of thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:47AM
Food allergies, People! If you are ingesting concrete or epoxy, well, that explains quite a lot about Runaway. Ol' Resin-gut, we used to call him, back when he was young and still rational.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @11:30AM (1 child)
For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors did NOT feed on wheat. And once they did, they were in poorer health.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:59PM
While what you say is technically true, you left out that they were also living in denser population clusters with no knowledge of sanitation. And a few other differences.
The invention of agriculture is closely associated with a decrease in the health, age, and height of the skeletons in the graves. Blaming this on wheat is silly, given all the other things that changed. And besides that, beer predates agriculture...though one may wonder on how frequently it could be imbibed in without agriculture to support it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimios on Sunday January 06 2019, @11:42AM (3 children)
We have written records of Coeliac disease (gluten sensitivity) as far back as ancient Greece.
I posit that the difference is that in modern times we have superior methods of obtaining white flour which causes worse irritation compared to the impure flour used in older times. I don't know if there are studies done on this, I've made these observations on my wife who is gluten intolerant.
Also we are far more exposed to gluten than in older times as flour is used for things you'd never think of, like the white coloring of a bitter lemon soda.
Yes there is a fashion side to it as well, but there is a growing part of the population who are not on a gluten-free diet by choice but by necessity, sometimes with fatal consequences for failure.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Sunday January 06 2019, @02:07PM (2 children)
As well, the 'soft, fluffy' breads have EXTRA gluten added to the mix just in order to make them so soft and fluffy.
I'm betting our bodies just weren't made to consume so much at one time.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:37PM
Not really. I mean, depending on the original flour (e.g., if they're using "soft" wheat), they may add a bit of gluten to raise it to the amount of "hard wheat" (which is generally milled for "bread flours").
But additional gluten does NOT make bread "soft" and "fluffy." It increases dough elasticity, which results in a "chewier" and more elastic result. As someone who used to buy 50 lb. bags of "high-gluten flour," I only ever used it by itself for three applications: (1) bagels, (2) as an additive to mostly whole-grain breads, where the extra gluten helped with the rise considering non-gluten-based grains that were often heavy, and (3) pizza, though I abandoned that in favor of standard bread flour because that level of elasticity isn't necessarily for pizza and I wanted a softer crust.
Back in the days before grocery stores commonly carried bread flour (maybe 25+ years ago), people sometimes bought a high-gluten supplement to add to bread dough. It does help with the rise of the dough by supporting the structure of the dough more. So bigger air bubbles and a bigger rise, which makes the bread "lighter" to a point. But add more and it becomes springy, elastic, and increasingly chewy and tough (like a bagel).
"Softness" comes mostly from added (mostly fat) components like butter/oil, milk, and eggs. "Fluffiness" (which is a combination of lightness and softness) can be achieved with those ingredients and extra dough processing like proper kneading, fermentation, shaping, etc. The "fluffiest" and "softest" breads generally contain the minimum amount of gluten that can allow a decent rise, given the weight and proportions of the other components. (For example, a high butter content makes the dough heavy, so you might need a bit more gluten in your flour to support the structure of the dough and allow it to rise to make brioche or something. But it's not the gluten that makes the bread soft.)
Well, it's difficult to say what our bodies were "made to consume." But primitive diets probably contained a lot more whole-grain elements which carry more fiber and other nutritive elements that perhaps could alter the way gluten is processed. Whole-grain wheat flours percentage-wise actually contain roughly the amount of gluten as "white" bread flours, if not a bit higher gluten content. So the actual gluten percentage isn't that off in bread compared to eating the raw grains. Of course, the processing that goes into bread making could potentially emphasize some chemical characteristics of gluten -- I don't know.
Beyond all this, it's of course worth noting that the vast majority of "gluten sensitivity" (i.e., non-Celiac disease) cases are likely bogus [realclearscience.com]. There are lots of foods -- gluten, sweeteners, MSG, etc. -- that people are convinced they have reactions to, but in double-blind studies, most people show no "sensitivity" compared to placebo/control groups. I'm not saying such sensitivities don't exist, only that the vast majority of the "gluten-free" hype for non-Celiacs is likely based on confirmation bias and patients who think they have conditions they don't.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 06 2019, @06:42PM
When I was a kid in the 70s, we sometimes made gluten steaks -- it's pretty easy: you just make dough and then wash the starch away from the flour, cook it with broth and then use as a meat substitute. It can be really tasty. I should make some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYubcYQvFKY [youtube.com] (when I was a kid we'd call it "monkey meat" -- never knew there was a fancy name for it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:29PM (1 child)
Haha, beat me to it. It's the oblig troll. Neck swells up and you die because you can't breathe? Then you must be a millennial incel. The only solution (nay, the final solution) is to send these pansies into the Army. That'll straighten them up.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:52PM
But they have bone spurs.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday January 06 2019, @07:13PM
My mother was doing gluten-free back in the 1980's, long before whole industrial production lines started up to cater to it. She legitimately feels awful whenever she has stuff based on wheat, so it was worth the pain-in-the-butt efforts to go to the tiny health food store or co-op in town to get the stuff she could only find there.
That's not the same as the lots of people who are doing gluten-free because they think that makes their food healthier. Of course, it doesn't really make their food healthier to not eat wheat-based food, but it seems like it does because by trying for gluten free they tend to think about what they're eating a lot more, eat less of random snacks, and take in more vegetables and proteins. They would have gotten exactly the same result had they chosen any fad diet they wanted, whether it be Atkins or keto or paleo or whatever else they've come up with this year.
The proof of exactly how much BS there is out there about food: Steve Jobs always ate what the foodie types thought was a super-healthy diet based on fruits and nuts and vegetables, and he's dead of cancer. Meanwhile, Steve Wozniak always generally liked pizza and chips and soda, and he's happily alive and still doing a whole bunch of fun goofing off.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @07:57AM (2 children)
These people are a bunch of nervous hypochondriacs...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @12:26AM
-1 Flamebait
Whoops! A moderator is allergic to the truth! That's probably the most common allergy there is!
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday January 07 2019, @11:58PM
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday January 06 2019, @08:15AM (7 children)
Nonsense. Let's begin with this: "based on a nationally representative survey". So we're relying on self-reporting, and (among certain groups) it's very trendy to have a food allergy, to show how "special" you are.
Then we have their own figures: 19% of people claimed a food allergy. The study included questions about their symptoms, and of that 19%, only half actually described symptoms consistent with an allergy. Of that half, "only half of adults with convincing food allergy had a physician-confirmed diagnosis". So now we're at half-of-half or maybe 5%.
Of those, how many really have a diagnosis, and how many had their doctor say something like "if you want to avoid shellfish, that's fine" - and the patient's confirmation bias took that as a diagnosis?
When you come down to it, the only number that - maybe - has some solidity is the number of people with epinephrine prescriptions. This was "less than 25%" of those people who claimed to have a diagnosis, which makes it less than 1.25%. Which sounds a whole lot more believable.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday January 06 2019, @03:29PM (3 children)
That's because the dude is doing infinite and frankly not useful hair splitting for a political/financial purpose.
Lets say you want people to eat more wheat, because I donno, you grow the stuff or are a political action committee for wheat farmers or whatevs. A crazy guy would redefine the symptoms of illness resulting from wheat consumption as merely being a "food related condition" and ta da he gets his research contract money by redefining away every person with Celiac disease as no longer being an "allergy". Note that this has no effect on reality; people who puke after eating wheat will still puke, antibody levels in the blood will be crazy high, malnutrition due to the puking, stomach wall biopsies will be abnormal, etc. The purpose of the article is sophistry of the highest (lowest?) sort. The linked article is not scientific discussion about the world, but mere sophistry.
If eating wheat makes you puke, and not eating wheat makes you not puke, if your doctor wants to play word games WRT it being a "food related condition" vs a "genuine allergy" will you continue to eat wheat resulting in puking, or if you've already figured out not eating wheat results in no puking will you continue not to puke even if that not puking makes some industry shill, shrill?
For another example, say an dumb carpenter said he was allergic to hitting his thumb with a hammer. A doctor can reeeeeee about how thats not an allergy all he wants; in the real world should anyone intentionally hit their thumb with a hammer merely because some industry shill reeeeeee'd about his thoughts being impure and incorrect and its merely a bruise not an allergy so humans are not allergic to hammer strikes to the thumb so OSHA should F right off? It gets weirder WRT woodworkers and "tropical hardwood" allergies, which seem to be real. Also some of the more adventurous wood finishes and glues in uncured form can cause quite an allergic response (thinking epoxy bar tops, for example).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:35PM
What? Sense? Crazy talk!
Why aren't you joining our incel bashing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @11:58PM (1 child)
I have onion intolerance, it's fairly common, I exhibit all kinds of symptons, especially if the onions are not well cooked. Do I not eat onions? Of course I do. They are fuckign delicious. I also know many lactose intolerant people who will eat ice cream, because sometimes it's worth the pain. Intolerance is definitely not the same thing as allergy, not even close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @12:54AM
For people confused about the difference, allergy means you're going to die in two minutes as your throat swells closed and you suffocate. Intolerance means you're going to die in 20-40 years from a malnutrition related sickness because your immune system slowly attacked and destroyed yourself. Eating vitamin pills won't help because the parts of you that absorb those nutrients are gone, destroyed by your immune system because it thought they were a threat. It's easy to know if you have an allergy. Some people never uncover their intolerances.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:10PM
You seem to be limiting "allergy" to people with SEVERE allergies. Not everyone with an allergy is threatened with anaphylaxis. Your earlier post rightly differentiates between "food intolerance" (which affects the digestive system) vs. "food allergy" (which targets the immune system). But immune system reactions can vary widely.
I've had a mild allergy to cats since I was a child. I've been officially tested by a doctor. Most times in the presences of cats I barely notice it, though. With prolonged contact (or an unclear house with a lot of cats), it may manifest itself by giving me watery or itchy eyes, perhaps a slight rash if the cat is particularly "friendly" and I spend a lot of time with it. I've lived for short periods in houses with cats without any severe reactions.
I have had friends and family members who have been tested with allergy panels by doctors. Many of them have mild immune system responses to some things. Others have things that could potentially be life-threatening.
I agree with you that the study may be bogus. But not everyone with an allergy will die with casual contact to the allergen, and doctors "confirm" allergies all the time without necessarily giving prescriptions for epinephrine.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:12PM
Epinephrine is only useful in treating some allergies. Others don't respond to it. So your final figure is a low-balled estimate.
OTOH, my allergist required me to carry epinephrine, but didn't give me a prescription. (He supplied it.) So even the low-balled estimate is too low. (That said, I never had to use it, and no longer carry it.)
Not all allergies are life threatening. I suspect that most aren't. But even though it isn't life threatening, it can be quite disagreeable, so I really need to avoid certain foods. (One example of something I avoid is bell peppers [not chili peppers, though], which causes intestinal bleeding in me. But that's not something that shows up on the allergy test, and I can eat things lightly flavored with bell peppers, so if they're in chunks large enough to remove, they cause me no problem. But officially it's not an allergy.) That's not an official allergy, but it causes me real problems. OTOH, I test positive to an allergy to shrimp, but that's never given me a problem. (Perhaps prawns are sufficiently different from shrimp?)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:37PM
Is an allergy only one that can be "treated" with an epi pen?
coeliac disease kills the microvilli in the gut, and prevents micro-nutrient absorption (every sufferer has slightly different levels of imoact, and symotoms, but long term impact is pretty much "early death", owing to something related to lack of thos micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc))
So, "allergy" vs "food related illness" may be semantics, but it *matters*, medically, because the treatment is different.
Some medical conditions require *prevention*, and that is the only way to "treat" the problem, so these are often called "feed related illneses"
Some can be treated after the event, and these are often/usually called "allergies".
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @09:44AM (7 children)
Eat your grains take your yearly injections, or else you may suffer from easily treatable problems known for centuries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @09:57AM (5 children)
What yearly injections? Vaccine boosters every 10 years for Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis. Measles, mumps, rubella especially if you deal with children. Only vaccine I would not take, since it's rather useless, is influenza vaccine. and that's only "yearly vaccine".
https://www.aafp.org/dam/AAFP/documents/patient_care/immunizations/adult-immunization-schedule.pdf [aafp.org]
So, eat your cornflakes and take proper vaccines not the bullshit based on your TV adverts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:01AM (4 children)
Everytime I go to a grocery store in the winter they are pushing flu vaccines like crazy. Even for free...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @10:42AM
Something pithy about greeks and gifts comes to mind...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:52PM (2 children)
There's probably lots of money laundering involved in the flu shot. That's all I can guess. A corporation never gives you something for free out of generosity or public service. There's probably reimbursements from somewhere flowing to the grocery store and all kinds of ways for money to be juggled, tax deducted, re-juggled, tax deducted again, and washed of any connection to wealthy donors who not only want the money to eventually make its way to a political campaign but want a tax write-off of that money as a bonus.
That's just the reality of capitalist medicine.
I don't take flu shots either, and everybody who does take it always gets sick the next week or two. Eating a clove or two of garlic is all I need if I start feeling under the weather, and in winter my fridge is never without some garlic bulbs. In addition to being good for the immune system, it also keeps vampires away, so win-win!
The weirdness of the flu vaccine is so unfortunate, because obviously it causes many people to then cast doubt on all vaccines.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:16PM
OTOH, I take a flu shot every year, and never get sick from it despite your claim.
That said, most years I didn't suffer much from the flu even before the shots. The one year in 10, however, was occasionally a real doozy.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:32PM
I had my first one about a month ago prior to starting as a pharmacy tech. No side effects other than an annoying aching at the injection site for a few days. But I also doubt it's as effective as the real heavy hitters like the MMR vaccine. Which I *also* got recently as a titer showed I'm still immune to mumps but lost measles and rubella immunity, WTF.
Agreed with the poster nearby saying the flu jab's wonikness has a detrimental effect on vaccination in general. I never got it before this and only got it because it was mandatory for the position.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 06 2019, @02:59PM
Non-obesity, I suppose? I can't think of anything else corn or wheat produces.
The real problem is financial of course, farmer PACs define what the USDA claims is the correct diet, and always has done so. USDA stuff if scientifically meaningless beyond economic stuff like "in that geographic area you can make a lot of money off farming wheat" for example.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday January 06 2019, @03:16PM (3 children)
Why? My daughter has eliminated onions from her diet because she claims "they're gross" but that doesn't seem to require a doctors prescription. Why would someone require a doctors permission if wheat reliably gives them a tummy ache?
The article is kinda fake news ish in the sense that it seems to intentionally conflate some basic science about IgA, IgE, and IgG immune system response.
People with IgE response to any food, nuts or in some cases wheat, could die rather quickly without an injector or ER visit. IgA immune response boils down to "severe cold symptoms" and that is uncomfortable but usually not fatal. IgG symptoms from wheat or whatever boil down to a day or two of traditional food poisoning symptoms, but as long as you stay hydrated enough, you can't die.
A simple blood test can give you the antibody results for all three responses to various proteins. My son's Celiac testing indicated elevated IgG levels, so all this injector discussion would be a complete waste of time.
There are financial issues. Docs hate lifestyle illnesses like Celiac and would rather diagnose stomach cancer or literally anything else. After the diagnosis, the the gastroenterologist wants $500 every six months to have a five minute consult along the lines of "still not eating wheat and still not getting sick? Well, keep it up!" We dropped that doc like a hot potato, what a waste of time and money. Well, the medical-industrial complex sees it as a cash cow, of course, but to the participants its merely a waste of time.
Usually its a PITA to eliminate foods from a diet, and that in itself makes things rather self limiting. Also about 75% of the population being carb addicted and thus fat-diabetic means cutting back on food intake is usually not a problem in and of itself. Vegan-ism and Vegetarianism are the most famous examples of weird exclusion diets leading to unhealthy bodies, and even those aren't THAT bad for most people most of the time.
The article is just weird and strangely unscientific. A bunch of sophistry, mostly authoritarian logical fallacy with a dash of just kinda random unrelated phrases that sound interesting.
Things get even weirder WRT racial stuff. Without at least some white euro genetic background, its racially very unusual to be able to digest milk as an adult; the 4.7M allergic to milk is more a measure of people who got sick of being slightly sick, rather than a medical diagnosis. How severely individuals respond to stuff thats bad for them varies a lot more than what is medically bad for them. Cheesy pizza tastes great to everyone, is a white privilege to digest, and for everyone else there's varying levels of uncomfortable response ranging from "eh, sometimes you have an upset tummy whatevs" to "Oh god I'm allergic and will never eat that again". The actual number of people who are not 100% OK with digesting milk as an adult is vastly higher than 4.7M.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:02PM
I think what you are saying is, real humans can't digest milk as adults. It pretty much just us throwbacks to neanderthals who can digest milk? ;^)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:35PM
Caucasoids, not white people. India is king of dairy cooking and it figured heavily in the ancestral proto-Indo-European populations from the ANE and the Caucasus region (hence the name). People with Bantu or Maasai ancestry can handle it just fine too; the Bantu were pastoralists and the Maasai live almost entirely on cow and cow by-products.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @09:26PM
This is very good information. I had been battling for years with some gut problems until I got a test done while on vacation in Europe. Turns out I have an IgG reaction to eggs which was causing my issues. For me it takes 2 to 3 days for a noticeable reaction to occur after eating eggs. This makes it really hard to work out what food cause issues. The most irritating thing about all of this is that where I normally live (New Zealand) there not a single facility that can perform IgG testing.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday January 06 2019, @03:56PM (4 children)
When i turned 28 a coupple of years ago i became alergic to everything. Until that point it was just one type of medicine. I got a screening and found that its now dust, dust mites, trees, grasses, and i have had severe allergic reactions to strawberries and almonds. Anytime i eat something i havent had in a while that is a known allergy for others i only eat a little until i know if ill die or not.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:03PM
After I retired I became allergic to work.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:20PM (1 child)
I think the screenings pick up mild allergies that you wouldn't notice in normal life. But the problem is sometimes what they pick up would have sent you to the emergency room, if you got there in time. And the reports that you get from the screening don't let you tell which are significant. (Possibly the test itself isn't calibrateable enough.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday January 06 2019, @11:22PM
My body reacts the same to dust/dust mites and tree pollen the same as it reacts to the same sized prick of histimine. Impossible to keep dust out of house, so i get to wake up sneezing and choaking every day. But whatever, could be worse. Was just interesting going so far to the extreme like i did.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:53AM
Just part of the process of becoming a conservative, Trump-loving, Republican. Nothing to worry about, unless he decides not to pay you at your Federal job for a year, or so.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:59PM (1 child)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the hygiene hypothesis [wikipedia.org] so far, since it's commonly implicated as something that may be contributing to increased incidence of allergies.
Our immune systems develop based on exposure to pathogens and various substances. Without such exposure, it's postulated that overreactions from our immune systems may occur and create an allergic reaction. There are potentially a number of contributing factors to this (if the hygiene hypothesis is true) -- from general cleanliness in our modern environment to anti-bacterial agents used frequently around us (and within us) to the lack of diversity in exposure to various agents (which is thought to come from a variety of sources, from a limited Western diet to increased Caesarian sections and decreased breastfeeding).
I don't know about you, but these days I see hand sanitizer everywhere. Could adults who grew up in a culture of anti-bacterial everything continue to accrue new allergies due to a dysfunctional immune system? Anecdote is of course not data, but one of my family members who is meticulous in cleanliness and had been using hand sanitizers, etc. for over a decade before they became common (and anti-bacterial soap much longer) now has been diagnosed with three different severe autoimmune disorders. Also, things like we know overprescription of antibiotics is a huge issue, but a side effect of that may also be decreased diversity in gut flora... and now we have a huge industry in "probiotics" to try to combat this (likely ineffectively in most cases).
As noted in other posts, many supposed "allergies" may just be food intolerance that causes digestive issues, rather than a true allergy. But those food sensitivities and intolerances could also be related to gut flora, so there may be related elements to the hygiene hypothesis, even if they aren't true allergies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @02:20PM
This hypothesis doesn't work in my case, I was a rather 'gross' child (and there's 8mm cine footage of me aged 5 covered in mud to prove it..), spent a lot of time mucking around with errr muck (e.g. Damming streams, digging underground dens etc etc) and was an inveterate forager, in short, for a glorious decade and a bit I was exposed to all sorts of weird and wonderful 'microbial things found lurking' in the hills, woods and waters in a 10-15 mile radius of my home. I still developed allergies later in life.
I know at least one of the minor (non anaphylaxis causing) allergies I suffer is genetic in origin, my father suffered from it, his father suffered from it, my sisters suffer it and it remained dormant in me until I hit my mid 40s, more lately I suspect I'm developing (currently) an intolerance to products of the Solanaceae family which might be genetic and has been passed down on my mother's side of the family. This has developed in the past two years after 50 years of eating produce from this family without issues, so far the worst offenders are potatoes and tomatoes, but worryingly it seems to be expanding to include chillies..
Spuds I can live without, tomatoes ? meh take or leave them...but chillies? fsck no!
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Monday January 07 2019, @08:48PM
Rather than keep changing terms from percent, to "1 in 5", to "nearly half", how about the more consistent - and more easily compared - 10%, 20%, and 50%?