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"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: 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.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(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.
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(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. I have always been here. ---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.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin