The Five Most Common Food Sensitivities

By Author: Dr. Victor Marchione
Total Articles: 90
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What would you guess would be the five most common food sensitivities in the world? Peanuts and shellfish? Or maybe wheat and milk? Which country do you think would be likely to suffer from the most food sensitivities? The U.S., France or the U.K.? The answers to these questions may be a little different than you expected, according to a recent clinical trial.
The study, which looked at more than 4,500 adults from 13 Western countries, found that nations varied in the rate of people who were sensitive to foods. For example, about 25% of people in Portland reported sensitivity to one specific food, while only eight percent of those in Reykjavik, Iceland, were found to have a food sensitivity.
To get their results, researchers tested participants’ blood for antibodies against a range of foods. This helped determine “food sensitivity,” which refers to an immune-system response to a food’s proteins.
So, who had the highest prevalence of food sensitivities? The U.S. came in at number one, with Germany, Italy and Norway following close behind. About 22% of people ...
... from each of these countries showed antibodies against some type of food.
What about the lowest rates of sensitivity? That honor went to Iceland and Spain with 11% each, with France and the U.K. following at around 14%.
When it came to the types of foods behind people’s sensitivities, there were a few surprising results. The top-five most common food sensitivities were hazelnuts, peaches, shrimp, wheat and apples. The research team found, contrary to popular medical opinion, that fish, eggs and cow’s milk were the least-common causes of sensitivity. In several countries, in fact, no one recorded either fish or egg sensitivity.
Hazelnuts seemed to be the most prevalent sensitivity in the largest number of countries, with the U.S., Germany, Norway and Sweden showing a prevalence of 12% to 15%.
The research team is unclear about why countries were similar in their patterns of food sensitivity. They noted that there are differences in the typical diets of the various nations that were studied. This suggests, they say, that a nation’s overall consumption of a food does not determine the prevalence of allergies to it.6
In Canada and the U.S., many believe that certain foods that are eaten every day—sometimes multiple times a day—are the most likely to cause food sensitivities. This latest study suggests that the answer to food sensitivities may be more complex than was previously thought.

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