Eideard

For Ingelisa Keeling, a Houston mother of three children with multiple allergies, mealtime was a struggle. Nuts, eggs, wheat, beef, peas and rice were all off limits — banned by the children’s allergist.

But recently, Keeling learned that her family’s diet need not be so restrictive. Although her children do have real allergies — to peanuts, milk and eggs, among other foods — extensive testing at a major allergy center showed that they were not in fact allergic to many of the foods they had been avoiding. Her 2-year-old son, who had been living on a diet primarily of potatoes, fruit and hypoallergenic formula, has resumed eating wheat, bananas, beef, peas, rice and corn.

“His diet had become so, so restricted that nutrition had become a real concern,” said Keeling, who traveled to specialists at National Jewish Health in Denver last summer for answers about her children’s diet and eczema problems. Among other findings, she learned that neither of her younger children was really allergic to wheat.

“That’s the big one,” she said. “Wheat is in everything, so it makes life a whole lot easier.”

Doctors say that misdiagnosed food allergies appear to be on the rise, and countless families are needlessly avoiding certain foods and spending hundreds of dollars on costly nonallergenic supplements. In extreme cases, misdiagnosed allergies have put children at risk for malnutrition…

And avoiding food in the mistaken fear of allergy may be making the overall problem worse — by making children more sensitive to certain foods when they finally do eat them.

The culprit appears to be the widespread use of simple blood tests for antibodies that could signal a reaction to food. The tests have emerged as a quick, convenient alternative to uncomfortable skin testing and time-consuming “food challenge” tests, which measure a child’s reaction to eating certain foods under a doctor’s supervision…

Blood tests may be unreliable because they fail to distinguish between similar proteins in different foods. A child who is allergic to peanuts, for instance, might test positive for allergies to soy, green beans, peas and kidney beans. Children with milk allergies may test positive for beef allergy.

Even when a food allergy has been confirmed, parents should have children retested, because many allergies are outgrown, particularly in the cases of milk, eggs, soy and wheat.

RTFA. Really worthwhile. One near and dear family member finally got round to expert testing on dozens of substances – and though she has serious allergies that are being dealt with, now, in methodical fashion – some of what we suspected turned out to be wholly innocent.

Approach the question like so many – in a deliberate scientific fashion. Forget this month’s fads and faddish solutions.