Food craving = food alergy?

[Khadaji]

I mentioned at lunch that I crave Chocholate. One of the guys said “you are probably alergic to it.”

I have never heard this theory. Is it based on science?

[Smeghead]

Nope. It’s complete crap, and your friend is stupid.

NEXT QUESTION!

[tremorviolet]

Yeah, it’s bunk. Food allergies are a favorite topic of flakey new-agey types. A lot of people seem to be convinced they have them on the basis of very little evidence.

Up to 20% of the population have adverse reactions to food and claim to be food allergic. On testing, only 1% of adults and 4% of children are actually truly food allergic.*

source page

Real food allergies involve real symptoms, not just nebulous statements like “craving equals an allergy”.

Typically, an immediate type of food allergic reaction involves the immune system - where traces of the offending food rapidly leads to symptoms of generalised rash, itching, body swelling, breathing difficulties and even collapse. Peanut anaphylaxis is a good example where traces of the food are absorbed in the mouth or intestine. This leads to the rapid release of Histamine from cells and a cascade of allergic tissue swelling.
Some people with the Oral Allergy Syndrome get a localised red itchy mouth and throat on eating certain fruit, vegetables and nuts.

If you do any googling on the subject, check out the sources very carefully. There’s a ton of really flakey pages out there that take food allergies for fact. A lot of pages cite the same books over and over but no actual mdical research.