Increasing food allergies could have serious consequences

For the estimated 12 million Americans who suffer from food allergies, eating can be quite an adventure.

Just ask Chris Paganelli, 54, who has been allergic to eggs and chicken since childhood.

“I always joke that I am not very much fun to go out to a new restaurant with, because I end up being pretty neurotic,” says the pharmaceutical rep and father of two.

Can you blame him? At a recent business conference in Chicago, Paganelli informed the organizers in advance of his allergies. So he thought it was safe to eat what appeared to be mozzarella on his luncheon salad. About 10 minutes later, Paganelli became violently ill. That’s when he realized he had accidentally consumed a large helping of chopped boiled egg whites.

Like many with food allergies, Paganelli has learned the hard way to be prepared. He reached for his emergency medical kit and quickly jabbed himself with an auto injector of epinephrine to reverse the anaphylactic shock that can be fatal in minutes. Despite his best efforts to protect himself, Paganelli says most people still don’t think that food allergies are “that big a deal.”

Tell that to the 30,000 people who are sent to emergency rooms each year for food allergy attacks, which also claim between 100 to 200 lives annually, according to a new report from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

If it seems like food allergies are on the rise, it’s not your imagination.

“For reasons that we don’t understand, the prevalence of food allergies has doubled in the last 15 years,” notes Wesley Burks, chief of allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center. In its report, the institute calls food allergies an emerging and “important public health problem.”

During a food allergy attack, the immune system overreacts to some food proteins by producing too much immunoglobulin E. That sets in motion a series of reactions that can produce anything from hives and a runny nose to a full-blown, life-threatening attack.

The severity of the reaction varies according to how many times the offending food has been eaten, how much is consumed and the genetic makeup of the food-allergy sufferer. Some of the most severe attacks occur from eating peanuts and tree nuts such as cashews.

The institute report notes that about 4 percent of adults and 8 percent of children, aged 2 and younger, suffer from food allergies. The good news: Many will outgrow their allergies.

That’s already started to happen for Gavin Perkins, 1, of West Hartford, Conn. His wheat allergy seems to have disappeared, although he’s still allergic to chicken, eggs, dairy products, soy and fish. Since Gavin breast-feeds, that means his mother, Lisa, has to be careful about what she eats, too, because food proteins pass through breast milk.

“I can’t rely on a lot of processed foods because soy and dairy are in almost everything,” she says.

Blood and skin tests — coupled with a physical exam and a history of food-related problems — are the ways food allergies are diagnosed. Any food can produce an allergy, but milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat account for about 90 percent of the reactions in the United States.

For now, avoidance is the only way to control food allergies. Since January 2006, the Food and Drug Administration has required food manufacturers to list leading food ingredients that can cause allergies and to note if products are produced on equipment that may contain residues of other allergy-causing foods, such as peanuts or soy.

But a study published last week suggests that the warnings are used so frequently that “consumers assume they are not serious,” notes the study’s co-author, Scott Sicherer of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. The study also found that the warnings “do not reflect the degree of danger” for those with food allergies.

In the meantime, here’s what experts recommend for people with food allergies:

* Read food labels. Formulations can change without notice. “Don’t assume that because it was safe last month, that it will be safe this month,” says Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder and head of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.

* When in doubt, ask. Not sure about a product’s ingredients? Call the manufacturer. “Don’t just ask what it contains,” Munoz-Furlong says. “Ask specifically if it contains the ingredient or ingredients that cause your allergy.”