The phone call to our good friend, Mike, started off the usual way: “Hi. How have you been?” The response was not so usual: “Terrible! Last week my lips and then my whole face swelled up! It must be something I ate but I can’t figure out what.” When it’s hard to pinpoint a specific food culprit, chances are it’s an intolerance to salicylates, amines or MSG (monosodium glutamate).

Salicylates are natural chemicals found in a wide range of fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs & spices, jams, honey, tea, coffee, juice, beer and wine. Aspirin is also part of the salicylate family. Amines are formed by protein breakdown or fermentation. Like salicylates they are found in more tasty food such as avocados, tomatoes, bananas, cheese, chocolate, wine and beer. And MSG isn’t just confined to Chinese takeaways. It’s naturally found in tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, meat and yeast extracts, sauces and stock cubes.

On our most recent catch-up Mike told us he had cut out tomatoes (“I was eating heaps of them”)and thankfully suffered no more puffer fish face episodes! Tomatoes are high in all three natural chemicals so avoiding them would certainly drop the levels in your body – hopefully to under your natural threshold level.

Food intolerance is different to food allergy. A food allergy is an immune response to certain food proteins and usually involves only one or two foods. It’s also more common in children and even the tiniest amount will cause a reaction. Unlike allergy, a food intolerance can take you by surprise at any age. It’s dose respondent which means you can get away with a bit but will react once you go over your threshold level. This threshold level can change so where you may once have been able to pig out on grapes, plums and tomatoes, you now find that too many cause a reaction.

It’s easy to get the diagnosis wrong if you’re doing it yourself. A person may assume they can’t eat bread because they reacted after eating a Vegemite sandwich. But it could have been the build-up of sausages for dinner the night before, a cup of tea, glass of juice, toast and honey for breakfast, and that canned tuna, avocado and tomato salad for lunch. The Vegemite was the final straw that tipped them over their personal sensitivity threshold, and the bread had nothing to with it.

If you suspect you have a food intolerance it’s important to see a dietitian or doctor who specialises in this area. They will be able to tell you exactly what you can and can’t eat. The biggest risk with self diagnosing food sensitivity is cutting out far more foods than you really need to – and who wants to do that!

Some useful links:

Allergy New Zealand

Food Allergies & Intolerances