This review provides an overview of food allergies, their impact on affected individuals and caregivers, regulatory activities, and current research efforts to improve allergen management and patient care. Food allergies have been reported to affect up to 32 million Americans, including approximately 6 million children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that food allergies in children have clearly increased by 50% between 1997 and 2011. Recent years have seen significant advances in the understanding of responses to food allergens such as the development of response thresholds that hold promise for developing more informative labels on food packaging. Staying current on advances in food allergy research will allow healthcare and nutrition practitioners to provide evidence-based guidance to individuals they serve.
This work was supported by the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee