What is food intolerance?

Food intolerances and sensitivities are extremely common in todays society and are becoming more and more frequent. Already today there are around 20% of the world’s population that suffer from food intolerance. Food intolerances can be hard to diagnose due to the high variety of foods that we eat every day and a wide range of intolerance symptoms. Furthermore, It is important to note that a food intolerance is different from a food allergy. While a food allergy results from an immune system reaction to a specific food, food intolerances usually involve the digestive system, not the immune system.

Food intolerance is the body’s difficulty to break down and digest certain food. This is mostly due to a lack of digestive enzymes, proteins or good gut bacteria. It can take hours or even days from the intake of the food until intolerance symptoms are shown. Symptoms can vary from stomach pain, bloating, diarrhea, skin irritations, rashes, headaches or even insomnia. Although intolerance symptoms are annoying and sometimes painful they are not life threatening.

An allergy to food however results from an immune system reaction. The body sees the ingested food as a threat and starts to fight it with all means. Therefore, allergic reactions are immediate and show symptoms like swelling, rashes, itching, and runny nose. Severe cases of allergies can even end fatal for the affected person.

Due to the long time span between food intake and symptoms of intolerance shown makes it difficult to understand which food items are the culprit of the sensitivity. Therefore, some people take years to fully understand their intolerance to certain food and non-food items like plants or chemicals. A food intolerance test can give quick information about your bodies sensitivities which reduces the time and pain that you otherwise would need to go through to understand your intolerance.