Allergy is a disease of civilization that manifests itself in various products and phenomena with a variety of symptoms. Food allergies are considered the most common; they endanger both adults and children. This is an inadequate hyperactivity of the immune system to certain foods. This pathology requires avoiding foods to which you are sensitive and following a hypoallergenic diet. Products with minimal allergenicity are considered hypoallergenic. But even they can cause negative consequences, since the immune response is an individual characteristic of the body.
How does an allergy manifest itself?
An allergic reaction can occur when irritants enter the body: antigens and haptens.
- Antigens are reactions to pollen, dust, animal hair, fluff, chemicals, etc.
- Haptens are food irritants and food products.
In each case, the menu and list of foods that cannot be eaten if you have allergies are selected individually, depending on the diagnosis and personal intolerance to certain food proteins.
Allergy symptoms may include:
- Rash;
- Redness;
- Edema;
- Itching;
- Stomach upsets;
- Diarrhea;
- Abdominal pain;
- Irritation of the mucous membrane;
- Asthma.
The main period of exacerbation of allergies occurs in spring and summer.
During this period, you need to monitor your diet as carefully as possible and try not to eat food that you are not sure is safe. You should not eat food that is harmful to your health.
It is recommended to have a test with an allergist to identify all possible irritants and create an individual diet for yourself, to understand what you cannot do?
A child often experiences food intolerance in the first years of life. They cannot eat milk, eggs, etc. In most cases, they outgrow this with age and can eat any food.
If children are unable to get rid of allergies as they age, then they will have to follow the diet as adults.
General rules
Nutrition for allergies in children should be physiologically complete, but gentle. It is necessary to limit salt intake to 7 grams per day. Preferred culinary processing of products is boiling, stewing, steaming, baking. Prepare first courses in meat broth with three changes of liquid, especially when cooking chicken, fatty meat or fish. It is advisable to eat small meals, at least 4 times a day.
If your child's feet or fingers swell, or bags under the eyes appear after sleep, limit fluid intake to 1-1.2 liters of water per day. The chemical and energy composition of a hypoallergenic diet for children is as follows:
- proteins (vegetable and animal) – 90 grams;
- fats – 80 grams;
- carbohydrates – 400 grams;
- daily calorie content of dishes is 2800 kcal.
Before moving on to building a menu, you need to understand the rules of diet therapy:
- At the first symptoms of an allergy in a child, limit salt intake to a minimum (3-5 grams per day). Since this disease is accompanied by an inflammatory process, and salt promotes swelling, you need to remove all pickles from your baby’s menu, including sausages.
- For the same reason, give your baby more calcium-rich foods. This microelement helps to quickly relieve inflammation and also strengthens the walls of blood vessels, teeth and bones. It is better to add cottage cheese, cheese, milk to the menu. If you are allergic to these products, you need to replace them with analogues with the same level of calcium.
- It is important to remove from the menu not only the main allergens, but also those products that cause a cross-reaction. For example, if your baby is allergic to milk, you need to stop giving him cottage cheese, cream, and sour cream.
- When preparing dishes, use only fresh and high-quality products. You should not buy products with dyes, flavors, food additives and various modifiers that extend their shelf life.
The duration of the diet can vary from two to three weeks to several months, or even years. When the symptoms of the disease stop appearing, after 2-3 days from the moment of improvement, you can gradually return excluded foods to the diet. This must be done strictly one at a time, moving from low-allergenic to highly allergenic.
What foods cause allergies?
Although a person can be allergic to any type of food, they are not allergic to salt and rice. With the help of scientific research, several of the most popular types of food that are rejected by the human body and which cannot be eaten have been identified. This includes eggs and milk, which are often rejected by children’s bodies and many cannot eat.
Allergy to eggs
Yolk and white have different degrees of impact on the body. If there is a rejection to chicken eggs, then goose or quail eggs cannot be used instead.
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People with such allergies should not eat many foods that contain eggs. These include buns, sweets and even ice cream. If you are allergic to any food, you should always study the ingredients of the dish before eating it and read the composition of each product.
Basically, along with the egg, the body also rejects poultry meat containing protein. You should be wary of medications and vaccines that also contain a protein component and can have serious consequences.
Allergy to dairy products
Milk ranks second in allergies. A person experiences aversion to any substitutes, be it powdered milk, sour cream or condensed milk.
You should not eat food that contains this allergen. There are about 20 proteins that can cause a negative reaction, but can burn when boiled.
For a child, cow's milk is often replaced with goat's milk. Surprisingly, many patients who cannot eat dairy products do not have a cheese allergy.
Allergy to fish and seafood
Fish is very dangerous in terms of allergies. A person can have an attack even when inhaling the smell of this food. This reaction continues in adults throughout life.
What kind of fish should you eat then, and what kind should you not eat? There will be unpleasant symptoms if you eat all types of fish. Sometimes the exception is canned food, during the preparation of which special treatments are carried out that kill harmful substances.
Seafood also has a high rate of rejection by the body. Such people will have to exclude shrimp, crabs, lobsters, squid, etc. from their diet. It happens that at the same time a person cannot swim in the sea where these mollusks live.
What fish should you not eat if you have allergies?
Cereals are a powerful allergen
There are frequent cases of intolerance to cereal crops. Buckwheat has a strong reaction. Rejection can also occur to any type of cereal.
You cannot eat flour that is made from cereal flour. What kind of bread can allergy sufferers eat and what kind should they not eat? There are practically no contraindications for bread made from wheat or gray, which will last for more than a day.
Vegetables and fruits are often rejected by those who have an allergic reaction to pollen. Allergies are caused by raspberries, apricots, oranges and plums. As a rule, after heat treatment, this food does not cause harm to adults.
Nuts and seasonings come last on this list. The most powerful allergens are found in peanuts. But you can’t eat other nuts either.
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Basics of catering for allergy sufferers
Don't be intimidated by the vastness of the lists above. Having an allergy does not mean that you have to eliminate ALL of these foods from your diet. As a rule, each person is allergic to only one, or at most several, foods. The main task is to find them. Special tests - allergen tests - can help with this.
However, you can go the other way: just gradually introduce each of the above-mentioned products into your diet in small quantities, and watch your body. If a rash or any other manifestation of an allergy appears, remember what you should not eat in the future. No reaction - congratulations, you can safely eat this product. Thus, find all your “dangerous” points and further formulate your diet, excluding them from the composition of your dishes.
Prohibited foods for allergies
During an allergy, you can’t eat a lot of food and constantly be on alert when buying new products in the store.
Always study the composition of the product.
You should forever give up food containing chemicals, such as lemonade, chips, and candy. Try to cook and eat food from natural products that you grow.
Many manufacturers may not list everything they actually have in their ingredients. By consuming a low-quality product, you can cause an allergy attack and suffer serious consequences.
Allergic urticaria due to food allergies
Foods that cause allergy symptoms are divided into two types:
- Plant origin;
- Animal origin.
Nutrition during exacerbation of allergies should be as balanced and safe as possible. Below is a table in which you can select a contraindicated type of food and find out where it may be contained.
| Products of plant origin | Allergen | List of products containing it that should be excluded | What does it contain? |
| Vegetables | Beets, spinach, tomato, eggplant, celery, lettuce, potatoes. | Juice, salad, vegetable puree. | |
| Fruits | Apples, kiwi, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, grapes, melon, watermelons, etc. | Juice, yogurt, jelly, ice cream, candy, cookies. | |
| Legumes | Lentils, peas, beans, peanut beans, soybeans. | Cosmetics, creams, soy. | |
| Nuts | Peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds. | Pastry creams, butter, ice cream, cookies. | |
| Cereals | Barley, corn, millet, rye, rice. | Bread, flour, cereal, pasta. | |
| Animal products | Milk | Sour cream, cottage cheese, cheese, kefir. | Sausage, white bread, ice cream. |
| Egg | Bird feather, yolk, white. | Mayonnaise, chicken meat, cakes. | |
| Fish | Sea fish, river fish, caviar. | Canned food, sprats. | |
| Cancers | Squid, shrimp, clams, octopus, crab, lobster. | Crab sticks, salads. |
Menu composition
The list of products used in a hypoallergenic diet is quite diverse. Products made from oatmeal and pearl barley, rice and buckwheat cereals, and semolina cannot cause any health problems.
Homemade dairy products, low-fat and without any additives, are very useful: kefir, cottage cheese, fermented baked milk. Potatoes are used without restrictions.
Authorized Products
You need to choose your own menu yourself. Contact an allergist and by doing an allergy test, you can find out all the contraindicated products and find out non-allergic ones.
There you can also learn about antihistamine nutrition and receive medications that reduce allergies.
Any type of allergy can go away with age. In children this usually occurs before the age of 3 years. Try to eat only healthy foods that will benefit your body.
All food should be washed well with filtered water before consumption.
The fruits should lie in it for two hours. Many people are concerned about the question, is cottage cheese an allergen or not? Only an allergist can answer you after conducting the necessary research. Of course, if you are intolerant to dairy products, then you should not eat this food.
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What foods can you eat if you have a food allergy?
- Boiled turkey, beef, chicken, rabbit;
- Tea without additives;
- Oatmeal, buckwheat, rice porridge;
- Olive and sunflower oil;
- Baked green apples and pears;
- Cucumbers, cabbage, peas, potatoes;
- Lavash, dietary flatbread, dry bread;
- Mineral water, dried fruit compote.
Diet for allergies
For allergy sufferers, the question is: “what to eat?” comes first. To get improvements, the diet must be strictly followed. There are a lot of questions regarding food.
We recommend keeping a diary in which you record all your failures and achievements. This way you can understand what food you can’t eat and what you can eat.
You need to carefully monitor your food and make your own observations. This will help you understand over time whether the food allergy is going away and what food your body is against.
You will see whether the list of allowed ones is expanding, or vice versa, becoming smaller. In a notebook you should write down absolutely all the food you consumed during the day and its quantity.
This will make it much more convenient for you to analyze the situation, gradually introduce new food and watch the reaction. A food diary will help you when you contact an allergist, where an experienced doctor will be able to draw appropriate conclusions based on your notes and prescribe you the most correct and effective treatment.
Food diary
A very popular question is whether you can drink coffee and eat sweets or not? It depends on how advanced your disease is.
It is best to avoid coffee anyway, as caffeine has harmful effects on the heart. You need to eat sweets with extreme caution and be sure of the composition of the food.
What you can sometimes afford are lean oatmeal cookies, special fructose sweets and other dietary sweets.
Features of a hypoallergenic diet
Diet is a necessity if you have food intolerance to any component. It involves limiting the consumption of foods that contain histamine. Because of this, small children under 1.5 years old are prohibited from giving eggs, fish, beans, nuts, and cow's milk.
At the same time, adults must also understand the dangers of eating foods that are hazardous to their health. It is necessary to avoid foods that contain histamine and food additives. In addition, it is recommended for adults to stop drinking alcohol.
The anti-allergy diet must be followed from 3 weeks to 2 months. People who do not know exactly what food they are allergic to should keep a diary of their eating behavior. After such an experiment, it is necessary to conduct an analysis that will most likely help determine the main causes of allergies.
Within 10 days after starting this diet, the first visible changes should occur. Paying attention to your diet and health is the key to a long and happy life.
