A new report from the National Academy of Sciences says it’s hard to know how many people in the U.S. actually have food allergies or whether they’re on the rise.
Part of the challenge is this: Food allergies are often self-diagnosed and symptoms can be misinterpreted. Sometimes people can’t distinguish a food allergy from other conditions such as lactose intolerance or gluten sensitivity, which don’t fit the medical definition of an allergy.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about what a food allergy is,” says Dr. Virginia Stallings, a board-certified nutrition pediatrician at the The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the chair of the committee that wrote the new report.
