UNDERSTANDING ALLERGY: THE ADDITIVE-FREE DIET
If you’re not allergic to a food itself, you may be allergic to a food additive: a colouring, flavouring, stabilizer, emulsifier or preservative. While considerably fewer people are allergic to additives than to food, additives are still a significant cause of adverse reactions.
One doctor tells of a member of her family who experienced sudden weakness, extreme fatigue and a swollen throat whenever eating cornflakes or instant potatoes. The problem was neither corn nor potatoes, however, but BHA and BHT (E320 and E321), two common preservatives.
Needless to say, a food such as cornflakes is apt to contain not one but several additives, any or all of which can cause the problem, Dr Bernard J. Freedman, of King’s College Hospital in London, found that 30 out of 272 of his asthmatic patients reacted to orange drinks, even though they weren’t allergic to oranges. As it turned out, most of those people were actually reacting to a triad of additives commonly found in yellow-hued, acidic beverages: tartrazine (E102), sodium benzoate (E211) and sulphur dioxide (E220) {Clinical Allergy, September 1977).
A lot of people are in the same predicament. The late Dr Benjamin Feingold, author of Why Your Child Is Hyperactive and The Feingold Cookbook for Hyperactive Children, believed that additives are the most common cause of all adverse reactions, affecting not just childhood behavior but every system in the body. ‘Any problem can result from exposure to additives,’ Dr Feingold told us. ‘Hives are common. Nail problems. Asthma. Rashes of all kinds.
‘Food chemicals are no different from drugs,’ Dr Feingold said. ‘If a youngster takes a drug and reacts, no one is surprised. But if he or she eats a food chemical and reacts, why be surprised? What’s the difference?’
As a matter of fact, food-additive allergy is often linked to drug allergy. Eggs dipped in penicillin, to retard spoilage, can be a problem for people who are highly allergic to penicillin. And people who are allergic to aspirin also tend to react to tartrazine, one of the most common artificial food colourings. Tartrazine is present in thousands of foods, beverages, cosmetics and drugs. Distressing reactions to tartrazine commonly include asthma, coughing fits and difficulty in breathing, facial swelling and purpura (broken capillaries beneath the skin, such as bleeding gums and bruises). But you don’t necessarily have to be allergic to aspirin to react to tartrazine.
To alert fellow doctors that the yellow dye causes many problems among allergic people, two physicians from the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania reported the case of a young man who landed in a hospital emergency room every time he swallowed anything containing yellow dye. It all started when the twenty-five-year-old medical student – who had a life history of allergy and asthma – ate some cauliflower with yellow cheese sauce at dinner. He hadn’t even finished his meal when he became short of breath and felt his throat tighten up. Before he knew it, he broke out in hives and couldn’t swallow at all. His wife, a registered nurse, gave him a shot of adrenaline, to no avail. In the hospital, doctors brought him around with more adrenalin, oxygen and emergency medication.
Five weeks later, the young man ate three yellow jelly beans. A little while later, during his regular hospital rounds, he felt lightheaded, his scalp itched and his throat began to close up. Again, hives appeared and his blood pressure dropped severely. Adrenalin and medication once again put things right. Two days later – while still hospitalized – he reacted once more, to a drug containing yellow dye.
Now, of course, he knows better and stays away from anything he suspects of containing yellow dye. Robert E. Desmond and Joseph J. Trautlein, the two physicians reporting the story, wrap up the article by alerting other doctors to the ubiquitous nature of yellow dye and its potential for both life-threatening and milder reactions, especially in allergy-prone people (Annals of Allergy).
Tartrazine may be the most notorious food dye, but it’s only one of several additives with allergy-provoking potential. Any of the food dyes can trigger an allergy. That’s because many artificial colours (like so many other food additives) are made from coal tar, a substance with a special knack for making people ill. But additives not made from coal tar aren’t any better; they’re made from petroleum. Bananas, apples, pears, oranges and tomatoes, for instance, are usually picked before they’re ripe and gassed with ethylene, a petroleum-based chemical that hastens ripening. Now, you might expect to encounter coal tar and petroleum in car exhaust, printer’s ink, dry-cleaning solvents, carpeting, clothing dye and even perfume – explaining any reactions to fumes from those items. But as food ingredients, the same chemicals can catch you off-guard. And if you’re allergic to petroleum in the air -any kind of air pollution for that matter – you’re also apt to react to the chemicals you swallow.
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