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The foods that cause the most trouble

If somebody might be reacting right now, don't wait for me — call your local emergency number. Open the emergency screen

A short list of foods causes most reactions, and the trouble is rarely the obvious dish — it is the sauce, the stock, the oil and the label.

Who is reading?

Same page, two ways of saying it. The kids' version is shorter and Ezzie tells it — but nothing frightening has been taken out, because leaving it out is how a child ends up surprised by it.

Before you read on

This is general education, not medical advice and not a medical device. It cannot tell you what anyone is allergic to, what is happening to them, or what to do about it — that is between them and their own doctor.

Some foods cause a lot more allergy trouble than others. Peanuts, the nuts that grow on trees, milk, eggs, wheat, soya, fish, the wobbly sea creatures like prawns, and sesame seeds are the usual suspects.

The tricky part isn't the food sitting on a plate looking like itself. It's the food hiding. Milk hides in bread. Egg hides in the shiny stuff brushed on top of a pie. Sesame hides absolutely everywhere, like a very small ninja.

That's why grown-ups read the little list of ingredients on the packet. The list says what somebody put in on purpose. It doesn't say what fell in by accident, which is a different puzzle, and that puzzle has its own page.

If somebody in your class can't have a food, it isn't because the food is horrible. It's because their body has picked a fight with it. The food is perfectly ordinary for everybody else and a real problem for them, and both of those are true at the same time.

A food nobody has ever heard of causing trouble is still an enormous deal for the one person it troubles. Unusual doesn't mean small. My gills are unusual and they are enormous.

I know where allergens like to hide. I don't know what's in the thing in front of you right now — the person who cooked it does, and they're the one worth asking.

Questions this page raises

Ezzie will have a go at any of these.

Ask Ezzie about this →