Ingredients
Raising Your Allergen IQ:
Formulating for the Free-From Category
By Steve L. Taylor, Ph.D.,
Food Allergy Research &
Resource Program,
University of Nebraska
May is Allergen Awareness Month and an ideal time to focus on some rele- vant allergen questions and provide
the most up-to-date answers. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) estimates that 12–14 million U.S. consumers have
food allergies, representing 4 to 4. 5 percent
of the overall population. Food allergies are
more common in infants and young children
than in adults because some food allergies, especially milk, egg and soybean allergies, can
be outgrown. The prevalence of food allergies
in children may be as high as 6–8 percent.
Furthermore, the prevalence of food allergies
is growing for reasons that clinical investigators do not fully understand. If we don’t discover the reason and counteract it, then food
allergies are bound to make an ever greater
imprint on health care costs and offer greater
opportunities for marketers on specialized
products aimed at this market.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) considers eight foods or food groups
to be the most common allergenic foods in
the U.S.: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish
(shrimp, crab, lobster), peanuts, tree nuts (
almond, walnut, etc.), soybeans and wheat.
These eight foods or food groups are thought
to be responsible for more than 90 percent of
food allergies in the United States.
Allergies Abroad. Other countries, how-
ever, have somewhat expanded lists of com-
monly allergenic foods. In Canada, sesame
seeds, molluscan shellfish (clams, squid, etc.)
and mustard are identified in addition to the
eight foods noted in the U.S. In the EU, the
list is even longer, with celery and lupine
added to the list. Careful and thorough stud-
ies of the comparative prevalence of allergies
to various foods have generally not been per-
formed, so public health authorities do not
have access to the information they need to
establish more harmonious lists among coun-
tries. The Europeans have recently completed
a large research project called EuroPrevall
that will provide data on the most common al-
lergenic foods in various EU countries, but
the results are not yet available.
Could the Big 8 Expand?
Most of the allergic reactions to foods in
the U.S. remain focused on the Big 8. No
other foods appear to be emerging as common causes of allergic reactions. Despite the
occurrence of other foods (e.g., sesame seed,
molluscan shellfish) on the lists in other
countries, convincing evidence does not yet
exist that any of these foods are common
causes of food allergies in the U.S.
That situation could change if we alter our
eating habits. For example, buckwheat is a
commonly allergenic food in some Asian
countries such as Japan and South Korea. The
prevalence of buckwheat allergy in these
countries is probably related to their frequent
consumption of soba noodles that contain
buckwheat. By comparison, Americans do not
eat buckwheat very frequently, thus lessening
the likelihood that American consumers will
develop buckwheat allergy. But if Americans
started eating more buckwheat as the result of
the development of an especially popular new
