Q. Sometimes I notice that eating two foods at the same meal gives me an allergic reaction that I don’t get when I eat the same two foods separately. An example of a food combination that bothers me is egg and apple. Also, when oak season hits, eggs seem to bother me more than at other times of the year. Is there any scientific evidence to back up my observations?
A. By its very nature, an allergic response to a substance is unpredictable and unique to the individual experiencing it. By dictionary definition, an allergy is an unusual immune response to an otherwise harmless substance. Researchers in the field of allergy have their own precise language to describe the allergic reaction. In medicine, an allergic response always involves Immunoglobulin E (IgE) and histamine. If it doesn’t, it is a “hypersensitivity” reaction or an “idiosyncratic” response. This reaction may feel just as bad as an allergic response even when it does not fulfill the definition of an allergic response.
Under normal conditions, the immune system is quite adept at recognizing dangerous invaders such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It appears that in some people, repeated exposure to a harmless substance such as a pollen, mold spore, or food will stimulate the production of the specific IgE that marks that substance as dangerous, whether it is or not. Further exposure creates an allergic response. One of the recent developments in the field is that IgE may not be as specific as was once thought. Two or more entirely unrelated substances, such as food and pollen, may share an identical IgE.
There has been a general increase in the prevalence of IgE-mediated allergic reactions, rising from about 1% of the population affected in the early 1900s to about 30% today. As a result, there is also an increase in allergic reactions to multiple foods. In addition to the egg/apple relationship, corn/banana, beef/yeast, milk/mint, cane sugar/orange, and pork/black pepper pairs have been clinically found to provoke worse reactions when eaten together.
The other partner that shares an IgE does not even have to be a food but can be pollen. One of the most studied food-pollen pairs is birch pollen and apple as a food, but several other combinations are well established. In our part of the country, in addition to avoiding egg and apple during oak pollinating season, it is prudent to avoid certain foods when certain plants are pollinating. These include:
Beef and yeast during cedar season
Milk and mint during ragweed and elm seasons
Corn and banana when pecan is pollinating
Wheat when iva ciliata is pollinating
Legumes when grass is pollinating
Potato and tomato when sage is pollinating
Pork and black pepper when poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and pigweed are pollinating
Cane sugar and orange when mesquite is pollinating
Certainly not everyone responds identically to these combinations, but if you know one of these is an allergen for you it should heighten your suspicion about the others.
This article appears in Tom ‘Leatherface’ Delay.