# Food craving = food alergy?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-craving-food-alergy/249211>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 8, 2004, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-craving-food-alergy/249211 "2004-06-08T01:22:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2004, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-craving-food-alergy/249211/1 "2004-06-08T01:22:06Z")

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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?

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**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2004, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-craving-food-alergy/249211/2 "2004-06-08T01:32:10Z")

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

**NEXT QUESTION!**

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**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2004, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-craving-food-alergy/249211/3 "2004-06-08T02:48:10Z")

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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](http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/allergy/conditions_food.shtml)

**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.