Foods that people with allergies can eat

Let’s put the core answer right here: there is no universal “safe food whitelist” for people with allergies. As long as you avoid foods that you know will trigger allergic reactions, you can eat all other regular foods. There is no one thing that everyone with allergies must eat or avoid. Individual differences are much greater than you think.

When I helped sort out cases in the allergy department, I saw too many people who went to extremes: there was a young man who was allergic to wormwood and dust mites. He heard from his elders that he could not eat seafood due to allergies, and he had not eaten seafood for 10 years. Later, he did an IgE allergen test and all seafood was negative. He went to show off three kilograms of crayfish on the same day, and nothing happened.； There is also a mother whose baby is only allergic to cow's milk protein. She doesn't even dare to give her baby apples and oranges, saying they are "cooling foods." As a result, her two-year-old baby is still deficient in iron and zinc, and all physical examinations are average.

Now regarding the diet for people with allergies, there are actually two different intervention ideas in the industry. It’s not clear who is right or wrong, but they are just suitable for different groups of people. One is the conservative "avoidance school", mostly based on the views of the older generation of clinicians or traditional nutritionists. It is recommended to avoid foods with a high probability of allergies (such as seafood, tropical fruits, nuts, spicy foods) to reduce the risk of triggering. It is suitable for those who have just been diagnosed with allergies and have not yet figured out their allergens, or those who have severe allergies, and the slightest touch will induce laryngeal edema and asthma. Please be safe. The other is the "tolerance school" that is more highly recommended by evidence-based medicine. It believes that except for the already identified allergens, other foods do not need to be deliberately avoided. Instead, it is recommended to try small amounts and diversification. In the long run, it can help the immune system build tolerance and reduce the probability of subsequent new allergens. This idea is already used in many children's allergy intervention. As long as there is no risk of acute attacks, there is no need to excessively restrict food.

If you still haven’t figured out what you can and cannot eat, here is a practical method that I compiled for a friend. It is much more reliable than blindly searching for lists on the Internet: First go to a regular hospital to do a common allergen screening, first sort out the minefields with high probability, and then keep recording them for 1-2 months. In a food diary, write down every time you eat something new. If you experience rash, itching, coughing, or gastrointestinal discomfort within 1-24 hours after eating, mark it red. If similar reactions occur after eating the same food three times in a row, you can basically determine that it is your allergen, and just avoid it in the future.

Of course you have to ask if there are any foods that are relatively less allergic? It’s not that there are nothing, such as japonica rice, millet, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, cabbage, pork, chicken breast, etc., which most people seldom eat. If you have just finished an allergic attack, your stomach and skin are in a sensitive period, and you don’t know what to eat, you can start with these. The probability of being allergic is very low, but it does not mean that it is absolutely safe. I have met patients with rice allergies before, but the probability is very low. If you encounter it, you can only recognize it.

Let me mention a pitfall that many people have stepped on. Don't believe the nonsense that "allergic constitutions can be cured by taking more vitamin C and probiotics." Current research only shows that some specific strains of probiotics can alleviate some patients with atopic dermatitis. Vitamin C can only help alleviate the discomfort of allergic attacks. It cannot be taken as an "anti-allergic miracle drug." If someone tells you that taking a certain health product will make you eat whatever you want without allergies, just block it.

In fact, allergies don’t really matter that much. I also suffer from seasonal rhinitis and am allergic to mangoes. Apart from not touching a single bite of mango, I can eat the rest of the hotpot, seafood, pineapple, durian, etc. without incident for so many years. On the contrary, many people have added a bunch of taboos to themselves, and eating every day is like walking through a minefield. Their nutrition is not up to par, their immunity is poor, and their allergies occur more frequently. Why bother? If you are really not sure about what you can eat, just do a test first, and then combine it with your actual reaction. It is more reliable than the "list of things to be distributed" posted online.