×

We use cookies to help make LingQ better. By visiting the site, you agree to our cookie policy.


image

It`s Okay To Be Smart, Why Are So Many People Allergic To Food?

Why Are So Many People Allergic To Food?

Thanks to curiosity stream for supporting PBS Digital Studios one

One second. What do we have here oh no no those are

cashews. So is this like a bowl full of death to you? Yes, well cashews aren't as

strong of a reaction for me but I am allergic to tree nuts. It's not fun, it's

not fun at all. Hey smart people, Joe here. I recently invited my friend wheezy

waiter to come by and talk about food allergies. Just one, they're not real

cashews, they're stunt cashews. Of course you should never trick a friend with the

food that they're allergic to, but it's okay

wheezy waiter and I are friends, and I'm a doctor. These days most of us know

someone with a food allergy, some food they have to avoid eating, or even coming

into contact with in order to avoid a dangerous reaction or even death. But why

are people allergic to food? And why are food allergies on the rise? It's nuts.

Maybe I'm just getting old but it seems like food allergies are more

common than they used to be. Well we're not imagining things,

scientific data backs that up. The percentage of children with food allergy

has definitely increased in recent years. I'm allergic to all tree nuts so I'm

allergic to walnuts, pine nuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts,

pistachios - here in Texas - pecans everywhere. Not pecans no pecans I always

say pecans, but you've taught me it's pecans. Yeah I play the right way yeah.

That stuff ends up in a lot of different foods, so I imagine you have to have

accidentally encountered this stuff before. I have accidentally encountered almost

all those that I listed. What happens is my mouth swells up, my

throat swells up, I get hives, I get hives in my lungs, I can't breathe, horrible

stomachache, and it lasts for three hours. But I don't think about

reading labels and that's a whole difference about how we navigate the

world as things that I don't have to think about and you do. And especially

now it seems like the nuts are cropping up in everything like barbecue sauce or

cocktails, like drinks now like to have walnut bitters in them. To make matters

even more confusing, adults can also become allergic to foods that they never

had issues with as children. I'm Emily Graslie

I am the host and creator of the YouTube channel The Brain Scoop and I work for

the Field Museum as their Chief Curiosity Correspondent. So I saw on

Twitter recently that you aren't getting along with certain kinds of nuts very

well anymore. Yeah I've never had a problem really with any sort of food you

know, but otherwise never have had any sort of allergy whatsoever then a

weird thing happened. Why don't we try almond milk for the first time? I never

tried it. The next morning just routine morning on my way to work I had my bowl

of cereal, poured the almond milk on it and I got to work and I noticed

that my nose was just dripping like a faucet, and I realized I was hot and

itchy, and I noticed that I was just absolutely covered in full-body hives.

I just was like this is really weird. Now a true food allergy is different

from a food intolerance. This is really important like if you're lactose

intolerant and you can't digest cow's milk. It can make you feel really sick

Aches, pains and digestive troubles, that kind of stuff. But if you're allergic to

milk, it could kill you. A true allergy is when your body's immune system has a

reaction to the food on a molecular level. It's your body treating food as a

germ or an invader, which actually doesn't make sense. Let's look at how

this works. Food is made up of lots of different molecular bits like the fats,

carbohydrates, and proteins. We're gonna focus in on the proteins - everything we

eat has proteins and they come in a variety of shapes. Our bodies usually

digest food proteins down to their most basic units, but some food proteins don't

get completely broken down and they escape into the body where they meet the

immune system. Now it's your immune system's job to recognize protein shapes that

come from dangerous invaders - viruses, bacteria, things like that sneaking

around your body. But peanut butter should not cause this reaction. This

makes no sense. Cobras, jellyfish, really big wasps.

Maybe. But not deliciously roasted legumes. Molecules called antibodies

stick to the foreign food molecule leading to the release of a chemical

called histamine. Which makes you really itchy, or if the reaction is bad enough,

it can cause anaphylaxis - where the entire body just goes haywire. From

dizziness to swelling to your ability to breathe. So I started looking up like

can you just develop an almond allergy or a tree nut allergy as an

adult - you can and I said well what could cause it. The only

unusual thing was this almond milk, so I immediately made an appointment with an

allergist. We needed to determine if almonds had specifically caused this

allergic reaction. So honestly we did this food challenge and nothing happened.

Nothing happened so you're sitting there now and you still have no idea what

triggered this, what it really was, or what you might meet again that could

give you a problem. And it could be nothing, it could be something else that

I ate. Emily had an allergic reaction to something. In cases like these even

doctors can be stumped. In the meantime he told me when I left the office that

day that I needed to operate as though I had a life-threatening tree nut allergy.

So he prescribed me epinephrine and I have an epinephrine injector that

I have to carry with me everywhere. I have to spend the next year carrying

this around with me, and maybe have to use it on some mystery

food that we don't know. I keep coming back to one basic question, why would our

bodies bother to have such extreme reactions? Reactions that could kill us

after a handful of trail mix, or a glass of milk. The truth is we don't know why

food allergies exist - there is a leading theory and I should stress this is just

a theory, that allergies might exist thanks to parasites. The part of

our immune system that recognizes allergy causing food also reacts to

certain wormy, buggy infections. Humans are a lot cleaner than we used to

be, back before hand sanitizer and indoor plumbing, and you know, science. Today we

don't have as many parasites entering our bodies, so maybe that bit of our

immune system is just bored - so it's overreacting and attacking

foreign-looking proteins in our food instead. Our clean, sterile, no dirt eating

lifestyles could be behind the rise in allergies of all kinds. But that's just a

theory, a parasite... wait that's not my catchphrase

What am i doing? Peanut allergies are the most common food

allergy, affecting nearly 1 in 40 kids in the US. In all, we know of at least 400

proteins for more than a hundred and seventy foods that cause allergic

reactions with eight foods accounting for 90% of those. Now a lot of

people are allergic to shrimp and other shellfish, and a lot of those people are

also allergic to little bugs called dust mites. Now shrimp shellfish and dust

mites are all invertebrates and all of them trigger allergies thanks to a

protein called tropomyosin. Well they share that protein and it's very

different from anything our bodies make. This is an example of cross reactivity,

like if you're allergic to cashews you might also be allergic to pistachios or

mangos since they're all in the same plant family. I'm telling you evolution

explains everything. So how can you avoid food allergies for you or your kids? Well,

just a decade or two ago doctors recommended not giving young kids foods

that commonly trigger allergies for at least the first few years of their life.

But that was actually the exact wrong advice. Food allergy rates continued to

rise, so doctors changed their recommendations. Today's advice suggests

parents should slowly introduce common allergic foods early, and in small

amounts - and it seems like it's working. Food allergy rates have stopped rising

at least. I mean we're parents now mm-hmm How does your having an allergy affect

what you're introducing your chile - if it were up to me I probably

would be incredibly more wimpy about it, but my wife my wife is introducing all

these things. She introduced all the all the nuts to her

so far and she's not allergic. So yeah, and I got nervous every

time. Which is fine. If you already have a food allergy,

unfortunately there's no cure. We're developing treatments like getting the

immune system accustomed to allergy causing foods in small doses, there's

even a sticker that acts almost like a nicotine patch for peanut allergy. But

please remember always talk to a doctor before you attempt any treatment.

Sadly with food allergies there's still more questions than there

are answers. We know what's causing them, we know a little bit about how to

prevent them, but we don't know why they exist or how to cure them. It's really

stressful to not know what caused it and to not have any reliable way of

testing what caused it. You take for granted when you don't have a food

allergy - you can go wherever you want ready to eat anything and so you're

automatically your world like shrinks quite a bit. Every restaurant you go to,

every lunch that you eat, if you didn't prepare it yourself I'm wondering like

is this gonna have something in it that could kill me? And am I allergic to almonds?

And if it's not almonds then what is it? Are people taking me seriously. That's a

big concern that people who have food allergies. But, it can be

life-threatening. Is it frustrating that people can't give

you an answer about why this happened. Yes, yes I would love a cure that would

be great. Do you've a cure are you gonna introduce?

A cure, well it's called exposure therapy. But every scientific question that we

know the answer to today was once a mystery just like this an answer barely

out of reach, in the fog of not knowing yet.

Someday we'll figure it out. Some nuts are just tougher to crack than others.

Stay curious.

Why Are So Many People Allergic To Food? Warum sind so viele Menschen allergisch gegen Lebensmittel? Why Are So Many People Allergic To Food? ¿Por qué hay tanta gente alérgica a los alimentos? なぜ多くの人が食物アレルギーなのか? Waarom zijn zoveel mensen allergisch voor voedsel? Porque é que tantas pessoas são alérgicas aos alimentos? Почему так много людей страдают аллергией на пищу? 為什麼這麼多人對食物過敏?

Thanks to curiosity stream for supporting PBS Digital Studios one

One second. What do we have here oh no no those are

cashews. So is this like a bowl full of death to you? Yes, well cashews aren't as

strong of a reaction for me but I am allergic to tree nuts. It's not fun, it's

not fun at all. Hey smart people, Joe here. I recently invited my friend wheezy

waiter to come by and talk about food allergies. Just one, they're not real

cashews, they're stunt cashews. Of course you should never trick a friend with the 腰果,它们是特技腰果。当然,你永远不应该用

food that they're allergic to, but it's okay

wheezy waiter and I are friends, and I'm a doctor. These days most of us know piepende ober en ik zijn vrienden, en ik ben een dokter. Tegenwoordig weten de meesten van ons

someone with a food allergy, some food they have to avoid eating, or even coming

into contact with in order to avoid a dangerous reaction or even death. But why

are people allergic to food? And why are food allergies on the rise? It's nuts. Чи буває у людей харчова алергія? І чому харчова алергія зростає? Горіхи. 人们对食物过敏吗?为什么食物过敏呈上升趋势?太疯狂了。

Maybe I'm just getting old but it seems like food allergies are more

common than they used to be. Well we're not imagining things,

scientific data backs that up. The percentage of children with food allergy

has definitely increased in recent years. I'm allergic to all tree nuts so I'm

allergic to walnuts, pine nuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts,

pistachios - here in Texas - pecans everywhere. Not pecans no pecans I always фісташки - тут, у Техасі, горіхи пекан скрізь. Не пекан, не пекан, я завжди

say pecans, but you've taught me it's pecans. Yeah I play the right way yeah.

That stuff ends up in a lot of different foods, so I imagine you have to have

accidentally encountered this stuff before. I have accidentally encountered almost |come across||||||||

all those that I listed. What happens is my mouth swells up, my

throat swells up, I get hives, I get hives in my lungs, I can't breathe, horrible keel zwelt op, ik krijg netelroos, ik krijg netelroos in mijn longen, ik kan niet ademen, verschrikkelijk горло розпухає, з'являється кропив'янка, кропив'янка в легенях, я не можу дихати, жахливо

stomachache, and it lasts for three hours. But I don't think about

reading labels and that's a whole difference about how we navigate the

world as things that I don't have to think about and you do. And especially

now it seems like the nuts are cropping up in everything like barbecue sauce or nu lijkt het alsof de noten in alles opduiken, zoals barbecuesaus of

cocktails, like drinks now like to have walnut bitters in them. To make matters

even more confusing, adults can also become allergic to foods that they never

had issues with as children. I'm Emily Graslie

I am the host and creator of the YouTube channel The Brain Scoop and I work for

the Field Museum as their Chief Curiosity Correspondent. So I saw on

Twitter recently that you aren't getting along with certain kinds of nuts very

well anymore. Yeah I've never had a problem really with any sort of food you

know, but otherwise never have had any sort of allergy whatsoever then a

weird thing happened. Why don't we try almond milk for the first time? I never

tried it. The next morning just routine morning on my way to work I had my bowl

of cereal, poured the almond milk on it and I got to work and I noticed

that my nose was just dripping like a faucet, and I realized I was hot and

itchy, and I noticed that I was just absolutely covered in full-body hives. |||||||||||||hives

I just was like this is really weird. Now a true food allergy is different

from a food intolerance. This is really important like if you're lactose

intolerant and you can't digest cow's milk. It can make you feel really sick

Aches, pains and digestive troubles, that kind of stuff. But if you're allergic to

milk, it could kill you. A true allergy is when your body's immune system has a

reaction to the food on a molecular level. It's your body treating food as a |||||||||||processing|||

germ or an invader, which actually doesn't make sense. Let's look at how kiem of een indringer, wat eigenlijk nergens op slaat. Laten we eens kijken hoe

this works. Food is made up of lots of different molecular bits like the fats,

carbohydrates, and proteins. We're gonna focus in on the proteins - everything we

eat has proteins and they come in a variety of shapes. Our bodies usually

digest food proteins down to their most basic units, but some food proteins don't

get completely broken down and they escape into the body where they meet the

immune system. Now it's your immune system's job to recognize protein shapes that

come from dangerous invaders - viruses, bacteria, things like that sneaking

around your body. But peanut butter should not cause this reaction. This

makes no sense. Cobras, jellyfish, really big wasps.

Maybe. But not deliciously roasted legumes. Molecules called antibodies

stick to the foreign food molecule leading to the release of a chemical

called histamine. Which makes you really itchy, or if the reaction is bad enough,

it can cause anaphylaxis - where the entire body just goes haywire. From

dizziness to swelling to your ability to breathe. So I started looking up like

can you just develop an almond allergy or a tree nut allergy as an

adult - you can and I said well what could cause it. The only

unusual thing was this almond milk, so I immediately made an appointment with an

allergist. We needed to determine if almonds had specifically caused this

allergic reaction. So honestly we did this food challenge and nothing happened.

Nothing happened so you're sitting there now and you still have no idea what

triggered this, what it really was, or what you might meet again that could

give you a problem. And it could be nothing, it could be something else that

I ate. Emily had an allergic reaction to something. In cases like these even

doctors can be stumped. In the meantime he told me when I left the office that

day that I needed to operate as though I had a life-threatening tree nut allergy.

So he prescribed me epinephrine and I have an epinephrine injector that Dus hij schreef me epinefrine voor en ik heb een epinefrine-injector die

I have to carry with me everywhere. I have to spend the next year carrying

this around with me, and maybe have to use it on some mystery

food that we don't know. I keep coming back to one basic question, why would our

bodies bother to have such extreme reactions? Reactions that could kill us

after a handful of trail mix, or a glass of milk. The truth is we don't know why після жменьки сухих сніданків чи склянки молока. Правда в тому, що ми не знаємо, чому

food allergies exist - there is a leading theory and I should stress this is just

a theory, that allergies might exist thanks to parasites. The part of

our immune system that recognizes allergy causing food also reacts to

certain wormy, buggy infections. Humans are a lot cleaner than we used to

be, back before hand sanitizer and indoor plumbing, and you know, science. Today we

don't have as many parasites entering our bodies, so maybe that bit of our

immune system is just bored - so it's overreacting and attacking

foreign-looking proteins in our food instead. Our clean, sterile, no dirt eating

lifestyles could be behind the rise in allergies of all kinds. But that's just a

theory, a parasite... wait that's not my catchphrase

What am i doing? Peanut allergies are the most common food

allergy, affecting nearly 1 in 40 kids in the US. In all, we know of at least 400

proteins for more than a hundred and seventy foods that cause allergic

reactions with eight foods accounting for 90% of those. Now a lot of

people are allergic to shrimp and other shellfish, and a lot of those people are

also allergic to little bugs called dust mites. Now shrimp shellfish and dust

mites are all invertebrates and all of them trigger allergies thanks to a |||invertebrates|||||||||

protein called tropomyosin. Well they share that protein and it's very

different from anything our bodies make. This is an example of cross reactivity,

like if you're allergic to cashews you might also be allergic to pistachios or

mangos since they're all in the same plant family. I'm telling you evolution

explains everything. So how can you avoid food allergies for you or your kids? Well,

just a decade or two ago doctors recommended not giving young kids foods

that commonly trigger allergies for at least the first few years of their life.

But that was actually the exact wrong advice. Food allergy rates continued to

rise, so doctors changed their recommendations. Today's advice suggests

parents should slowly introduce common allergic foods early, and in small

amounts - and it seems like it's working. Food allergy rates have stopped rising

at least. I mean we're parents now mm-hmm How does your having an allergy affect

what you're introducing your chile - if it were up to me I probably

would be incredibly more wimpy about it, but my wife my wife is introducing all ||||weak||||||||||

these things. She introduced all the all the nuts to her

so far and she's not allergic. So yeah, and I got nervous every

time. Which is fine. If you already have a food allergy,

unfortunately there's no cure. We're developing treatments like getting the

immune system accustomed to allergy causing foods in small doses, there's

even a sticker that acts almost like a nicotine patch for peanut allergy. But

please remember always talk to a doctor before you attempt any treatment.

Sadly with food allergies there's still more questions than there

are answers. We know what's causing them, we know a little bit about how to

prevent them, but we don't know why they exist or how to cure them. It's really

stressful to not know what caused it and to not have any reliable way of

testing what caused it. You take for granted when you don't have a food

allergy - you can go wherever you want ready to eat anything and so you're

automatically your world like shrinks quite a bit. Every restaurant you go to,

every lunch that you eat, if you didn't prepare it yourself I'm wondering like

is this gonna have something in it that could kill me? And am I allergic to almonds?

And if it's not almonds then what is it? Are people taking me seriously. That's a

big concern that people who have food allergies. But, it can be

life-threatening. Is it frustrating that people can't give

you an answer about why this happened. Yes, yes I would love a cure that would

be great. Do you've a cure are you gonna introduce?

A cure, well it's called exposure therapy. But every scientific question that we

know the answer to today was once a mystery just like this an answer barely

out of reach, in the fog of not knowing yet.

Someday we'll figure it out. Some nuts are just tougher to crack than others.

Stay curious.