You could also be short of breath or have a really sore tummy, or even feel like something bad is going to happen. Surprisingly, all of this could be caused by something you’ve just eaten – from the better-known allergens of nuts and shellfish to the more obscure, including sulphites and food dyes.
With World Allergy Week just around the corner (2 to 7 April), Kymn Grant-Smith from Just Peachy maintains that it’s a good time to pay more attention to what you eat…
While many of us – parents or the more health-conscious especially – might occasionally look at the ingredients and nutritional content details on food packaging, very few of us really know how many of these affect our bodies negatively, and how much they can impact our quality of life.
A serious food allergy
In the case of Kymn Grant-Smith, entrepreneur and founder of Just Peachy, discovering that her 10-month-old baby boy was battling serious food allergies made this battle personal: “Trying to find the source of the allergy and identify exactly what was causing his distress was extremely frustrating. After months of constantly monitoring what he was eating, repeated allergy testing and ongoing worry, we finally discovered that he was reacting to minute quantities of ingredients in certain preservatives. His reactions to these were severe in the beginning and started getting less and less as we grew wiser and got closer to isolating them.”
Kymn’s response was decisive: To get into her kitchen and create a range of really tasty dried fruit and snacks that her son could eat – without any preservatives or additives – just as nature intended. “The challenge with food allergies is that the tiniest amount of an allergen can cause a reaction. Your body usually then reacts immediately; with your immune system seeing the specific food as harmful and creating one or more symptoms. This meant that I had to come up with creative and natural methods to preserve the fruit and nuts, without compromising on the flavour,” she explains.
While there are different degrees of reactions (from mild to life-threatening), they can involve everything from your skin, mouth, eyes, lungs, heart and stomach to your brain, including the more common skin rashes, itching and swelling of the lips, tongue or throat; dizziness and/or fainting; stomach pain and vomiting; and even feeling like something awful is about to happen.
