INTRODUCTION

No one is sure why food allergies are on the rise in the United States, especially for our children. But food allergies are indeed on the rise. "The prevalence of peanut allergies has doubled in the five years from 1997 to 2002 according to research reported in the...Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and researchers don't really know why." Research is ongoing to determine the cause for the increase of food allergies. According to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, scientists believe that less than one percent of the population was affected by a food allergy ten years ago. Today, the number of people with food allergies is four percent or 11.4 million Americans, which falls between cancer and diabetes rates in the chart below.

Figures obtained from FAAN, FDA and AAFA.

In the United States, food allergy rates are higher in children than in adults. According to the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, six to eight percent of school aged children have food allergies. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America eight percent of preschool aged children have food allergies. Why? One study found that children born of women over the age of twenty-nine are about three times more likely to have food allergies, according to the Children's Hospital Boston's Allergy/Immunology program between 1998 and 2000. A history of family allergies will increase the likelihood that offspring will have allergies.

Food allergies are different from food intolerances: They are more serious and can result in anaphylactic shock. A food allergy exists when the immune system kicks into action as a "defense" to the food and creates an IgE antibody to attack the food in the blood stream. Ninety percent of food allergies are caused by eight foods: Dairy, soy, eggs, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish. The most severe reactions occur with peanuts and tree nuts, according to Massachusetts Department of Education. U.S. emergency rooms handle roughly 30,000 allergic reactions each year. Our families suffer from over 150 deaths each year.

Food allergies, especially in our youngest members of society, are becoming an epidemic. This epidemic is silently growing. Disbelief among parents, grandparents and much of society fuels the epidemic as we watch it happen. We, as a society, need to embrace this invisible disability. We need to support each other socially and emotionally while the medical and scientific answers are being found. We also need to ask whether food allergies can manifest in disorders such as autism, ADHD and asthma. We need to ask our government to allocate more funding for programs on food allergies and then encourage our medical community to research why food allergies are on the rise...

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