A food allergy involves your body's immune system responding to a specific food or component of a food. If one of your parents has a food allergy, you're twice as likely to develop one. Although you can have food allergies at any age, children are 10 times more likely to have a food allergy than adults. As you get older and your digestive system matures, your body is less likely to absorb food or food components that trigger allergies.
Children typically outgrow allergies to foods such as milk, wheat and eggs.
Allergies to peanuts, tree nuts or shellfish, or severe allergies, are more likely to be lifelong. Other reactions to food don't involve your immune system and, consequently, the release of histamine. These reactions aren't true food allergies. Instead, they may be food intolerances. Because food intolerances may involve many of the same symptoms as food allergies do, such as nausea, vomiting, cramping and diarrhea, they're often confused.