Food Intolerance: FAQs (1)
What is food intolerance?
If you're body cannot tolerate a particular food, or one of its ingredients, then you will experience a reaction - the type of symptoms that arise vary from person to person so it is not possible to say that, for example, apples will cause headaches or milk will cause stomach problems.
I have drawn up a list of symptoms and conditions that have been linked with food problems - it will give you an idea of the range of potential problems.
You can be intolerant of any of the following:
- A complete food such as milk, soya, apple, egg, pork, wheat, mushroom, chicken, lettuce, onion, beef, nuts, oats.
- A naturally occurring chemical such as:
Salicylate in many herbs, fruit and vegetables
Tyramine in aged meat, cheeses and wine
Purines in protein foods
Amines in cooked foods
Solanine in vegetables, or
naturally occurring Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
Details of food chemicals can be found in the library.
- An added ingredient that does not occur naturally in the food - such as a preservative, colouring, flavour or antioxidant. These food additives can be a very hidden problem as not all of them need to be declared on packaging.
- In a complex food, i.e. any processed food, you could be sensitive to one of the ingredients. For example, in bread it is possible to react to wheat, preservatives, flour improvers (such as soya), yeast, or bleaching agents. In a food product such as sausages the list of potential suspects may very well be much longer and could include pork, beef, rusk (wheat, yeast, salt), antioxidants, preservatives, flavour enhancers, colours, herbs and spices.
You can find out more in Change Your Diet and Change Your Life.