What is Food Intolerance
Food intolerance is an adverse reaction to some sort of food or ingredient that occurs every time the food is eaten, but particularly if larger quantities are consumed.
What are the causes of food intolerance?
Food intolerance occurs when the body is unable to deal with a certain type of foodstuff. This is usually because the body doesn’t produce enough of the particular chemical or enzyme that’s needed for digestion of that food. This may be caused by the fact that food manufacturers add by-products of, for example, wheat and milk to processed foods as they are relatively cheap! Often people consume higher quantities of the same foods daily without knowing it and the body builds up an intolerance to that food. For example, one of the most common types is intolerance of cow’s milk, which contains a type of sugar called lactose. Many people have a shortage of the enzyme lactase; without this enzyme they can’t break down milk sugar into simpler forms that can be absorbed into the bloodstream and this causes unpleasant symptoms.
What are the symptoms of food intolerance?
Food intolerances are rarely harmful but may cause unpleasant symptoms, including nausea, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, fatigue, headaches, catarrh and thrush ……to name but a few.
Milk, eggs, peanuts, nuts, fish, shellfish, soya, wheat and yeast are the most common foods involved.
At Foreman & Jones we offer YorkTest Food Intolerance Testing, which you can find out more about here.
By Jodie Foreman
For more information on Food Intolerance and how we can help, call us on the number below.
