You might assume you dodged a food allergy as a kid—but according to the results of a recent study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, almost half of people with food allergies develop them as adults. The scary part? Mealtime reactions are getting more common. In other words, eating an entire seafood platter for the first time in a while might carry an unexpected risk.
After analyzing more than 10 years of data, the study authors estimated that about 4% of people deal with food allergies.
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"Little is known about exactly how and why exactly allergies develop," says lead study author Ruchi Gupta, MD. "Adult-onset allergies are particularly interesting to study because they likely involve losing immune tolerance to foods that adults have already been previously exposed to and eaten without having an allergic reaction."
Plus, it's possible to develop an allergy to a food you've never encountered before, Dr. Gupta adds.
Allergic reactions are immune system responses that happen when your body mistakenly thinks a food is an invader and tries to destroy, according to the Cleveland Clinic. More than 160 foods can cause these flare ups. For adults, the most common food allergies are shellfish, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and peanuts—the latter of which men are more likely to have a reaction to than women, the study found.
Food allergies are notoriously unpredictable. A reaction can affect your skin, your respiratory system, digestive tract, and even your heart, depending on where your body releases the cocktail of allergy fighting antibodies and histamines. To further complicate things, the way you react to a food one time might not be the way you react to it the next.
“If you develop specific symptoms associated with allergic attacks within minutes to several hours after eating a particular food, you may have a food allergy,” says James Baker, MD, CEO and chief medical officer of Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE). Here are five signs to look out for.
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