What Do You Know About Children Food Allergies?

Children food allergies can be a terrifying ordeal for parents who notice their precious child breaking out in sudden skin rashes, throwing up after eating or having trouble breathing.

While grade school and preschool child food allergies are rarely fatal, they can cause a lot of undue suffering and require a lifetime of careful vigilance to prevent symptoms from appearing. Over the years, the number of child allergies seems to be on the rise, but some say this is due to an increased awareness and more frequent testing.

Critics say the only reason why children food allergies have "gone up" in recent years is that the general public is more aware about the possibility of food allergies in kids.

They also argue that more and more doctors are using unreliable blood tests, which work better to rule out a food allergy than to provide definitive proof of the allergy. In 2003, a report published in Pediatrics Magazine said that blood allergy tests were only half accurate.

In 2007, researchers at the John Hopkins Children's Center reported that blood allergy tests could both overestimate and underestimate the body's immune response to an allergen.

Some doctors posit that their recommendations may have inadvertently played a role in children food allergies. The American Academy of Asthma Allergy and Immunology is currently re-evaluating guidelines recommending that eggs, peanuts and shellfish not be introduced to a child's diet until age 2 or 3.

Early exposure to peanuts has shown to decrease the peanut allergy risk in 10,000 British Children (The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunolgoy, 2008).

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