Chinese people don’t have food allergies

“"Chinese people do not have food allergies" is a complete misconception. Chinese people not only have food allergies, but the prevalence rate has also shown a clear upward trend in the past 20 years. The reason why the public has this illusion is essentially the result of multiple factors such as insufficient knowledge in the past, limited medical conditions, and low disease recognition.

My neighbor's child is 7 years old. When he was a child, his mouth became red and swollen when he ate mangoes. In severe cases, he even developed a small red rash on his face. His grandmother always said, "Mangoes are very irritating, so just cook them before eating them." It wasn't until last year that the child couldn't breathe after eating a small piece of mango and was sent to the emergency room, where he was finally diagnosed with a mango allergy. In the past six years, the whole family had never thought of this symptom as an "allergy." This is actually a microcosm of many Chinese families: Going forward 20 to 30 years, most people have never heard of the concept of "food allergy". If they get rashes, diarrhea, or itching after eating something, they will either classify it as "inflammation" or "wetness", or they will say that "the food is not clean" or "their stomach is weak". At most, it will be over if they don't eat in the future. Few people will realize that this is a problem with the immune system.

It is actually quite normal for the older generation to have this kind of understanding. In an era of material scarcity, having enough to eat was already a top priority. Who would care about the small rashes on the backs of their hands after eating shrimp? Even if there is a serious allergic reaction, many primary health centers cannot even conduct basic allergen testing, and there is no legal treatment. In the end, they can only let it go. The statistically low prevalence rate naturally gives people the illusion that "Chinese people do not have this problem." I have a friend who works as a nurse in the pediatric department of a tertiary hospital. He said that every week in the outpatient clinic, we encounter more than a dozen children with food allergies, ranging from allergies to rice and wheat to allergies to peach hairs and beef. Some children even get rashes when they touch eggs. 20 years ago, these children would most likely be labeled as "picky eaters" or "squeamish".

Survey data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 can also support this: In the ten years from 2010 to 2020, the prevalence of food allergies in domestic children under 14 years old has increased from 3.5% to 8.2%, which is equivalent to one in every 12 children with food allergies. The prevalence of food allergies in adults is also rising year by year. As for why there are more and more people with allergies now, there is no unified conclusion in the academic community: one group supports the "hygiene hypothesis" and believes that the living environment is too clean now, children are exposed to fewer microorganisms from an early age, and the immune system has not received enough "training", making it easy to treat harmless food proteins as invading foreign enemies. ； Some studies also believe that the core reason is that the diet structure has changed. In the past, everyone ate common local ingredients. Now, previously rare foods such as avocados, chia seeds, and deep-sea fish are served on children’s tables early, and the probability of exposure to new allergens is naturally higher. ； There is also a group of people who believe that the increase in data is mainly due to the popularization of testing methods. Many cases that were missed in the past can now be diagnosed. It is not about how many new patients there are, but that they were not detected before.

It’s interesting to say that I lived with relatives in a rural area for half a year, and found that the children in the village who rolled on the dirt slopes every day, grabbed cucumbers and gnawed them without washing, indeed rarely had food allergies. On the other hand, many families in the city who used disinfectant wipes to wipe their hands and cook tableware every day were more likely to encounter a child who was allergic to something. Of course, this is just a personal intuitive feeling, not a rigorous conclusion, and it can also illustrate that different research perspectives have their own realistic support. I ate crabs for the past two years without any problems. Last autumn I ate half a hairy crab, and that night I had vomiting and diarrhea, and I had wheals all over my body. I went to the hospital for a check-up and found out that I was suddenly allergic to crabs. The doctor said that the immune status of adults fluctuates, and not being allergic before does not mean that you will never be allergic all your life. Before, I thought that "adults suddenly become allergic" was nonsense. Only when it was my turn did I realize that it was not hypocritical.

Nowadays, many people still think that "allergies are something you get used to, and you can tolerate them after eating them a few times." This kind of perception is really unacceptable. Unless you are undergoing desensitization treatment under the professional guidance of a doctor, if you insist on eating allergenic foods, you will be itchy and develop rashes all over your body, and in severe cases, you will suffer from laryngeal edema and anaphylactic shock. Last year, I saw in the news that someone knew that he was allergic to mangoes and ate a whole mango to prove that he was "not squeamish". As a result, he went directly to the ICU for rescue. Nowadays, many parent-child restaurants and Internet celebrity coffee shops will post notices at the door, saying that our ingredients contain nuts, dairy products, and gluten. Please inform us in advance if you have allergies. Who would have thought that there would be so much care about eating twenty years ago?

To put it bluntly, it’s not that Chinese people don’t have food allergies, it’s just that we didn’t see them, didn’t diagnose them, and didn’t take them seriously before. In the future, when you meet someone who says you are allergic to something, don't just say, "I've never heard of anyone allergic to this all my life. You are just too picky." Asking if you can help change the dish is more practical than anything else.