Children's Food Allergies Increasing in U.S

Food allergies for children in American seem to be steadily on the rise, now affecting approximately 3 million kids. Experts say that this might be because parents are more aware and have their children checked out earlier and quicker by their physician.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 1 in 26 children were diagnosed with food allergies last year. The figure is up from 1 in 29 in the year 1997. This 18 percent increase in more than enough to be considered greater than a statistical blip, according to the study’s lead author, Amy Branum of the CDC.
However, no one really knows what is driving this increase. Some experts say that the doubling of peanut allergies, which as been noted in previous studies, is considered one factor. Also, children seem to taking longer to outgrow allergies to eggs and milk than they did in the past. But they are also figuring doctors and parents into the equation who are more likely to consider food as the trigger for such allergy symptoms as breathing problems, vomiting, and skin rashes.
Anne Munoz-Furlong, which is the chief executive of the advocacy organization Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network stated, “A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said ‘They have a weak stomach’ or ‘They’re sickly’.”
The CDC results came from an in-person, survey in 2007 that went door-to-door of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under the age of 18. When the researchers asked if a child in the house had any kind of allergies to food in the previous 12 months, approximately 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a physician was the one who made the diagnosis, and none of their medical records were checked. Some of the parents may not know the difference between digestive disorders such as being lactose intolerant and immune system-based food allergies, so it is possible that the findings of this study are a bit off.
Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that the results of this study mirror previous national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies. “This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close.”
However, the CDC study did not give us a breakdown of which foods were to blame for the allergy problems. Other research conducted suggests that approximately 1 in 40 Americans will have an allergy to milk at some point in their lives, and approximately 1 in 50 percent will be allergic to eggs. Most people will more than likely outgrow these allergies in adulthood.
According to Sampson, about 1 in 50 are allergic to shellfish and almost 1 in 100 are allergic to peanuts that generally persist for their whole life. He explained that some people will have allergies to more than one food and this is why the overall food allergy prevalence is about 4 percent.
The study also shows that children that suffer from food allergies tend to be more likely to have respiratory problems, asthma, and eczema than kids that do no have allergies to food, confirming previous research. In addition, the number of children that had to be hospitalized for food allergies is on the rise. The number of hospital discharges for food allergies, jumped from 2,600 annually in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 annually for recent years.
In a first for a national study of this type, is the ethnic/racial breakdown, which showed Hispanic children to have lower rates of food allergies than black or white children. Munoz-Furlong stated that the reason for the last finding may not be genetics. She is Hispanic herself and said that people in her own family have been unwilling to consider that food allergies could be the reason for children’s illnesses. She said, “It’s a question of awareness.”