Essay On Food Allergies

Every day, people enjoy foods like bread, peanut butter, and cheese; foods like these have become commonplace in normal diets. It’s probably hard to imagine life without them, but many people are unable to eat these foods and others without uncomfortable or dangerous bodily reactions. As many as 15 million Americans may suffer from food allergies ("FARE" 3), which result when a person’s immune system attacks harmless food proteins with potentially fatal consequences. Because of this, food allergies affect every aspect of a person’s life and need to be taken seriously by both the affected person and those around them.
What exactly is a food allergy? As previously stated, a food allergy results when a person’s immune system overreacts to a harmless

The short answer is that allergens are everywhere. Foods that are not commonly associated with an allergen often contain it as an additive; in fact, gluten is the second most common additive in packaged foods (Walsh 152), which makes it particularly difficult to avoid. Also, severe allergic reactions can be triggered just by touching or smelling an allergen, which makes walking into any place containing food dangerous (Turner para. 3). But cross contamination is perhaps the biggest reason food allergies are so dangerous. Cross contamination is the process by which bacteria or other particles of a substance are unintentionally transferred to another substance, with potentially harmful effects. Because even a tiny bit of an allergen can induce an allergic reaction in very sensitive people, cross contamination is a prominent risk for people with food allergies. For example, a person with an allergy to shellfish can be harmed if a chef prepares an otherwise fish-free meal on the same surface that a shrimp dish was prepared on. For these reasons, the entire population—not only those close to individuals with food allergies--needs to be aware of the dangers allergens pose as well as how those allergens can be avoided, particularly people who work in food-related