And eating goes from being pleasurable to being problematic. While it can be easy to confuse food intolerance and food allergy, there are important distinctions between them. While food allergy involves the immune system, food intolerance is generally a digestive problem. And while some symptoms of both disorders resemble each other, others do not. The Allergy Label Food allergy is often what people think they have when they have trouble with a particular food.
Some folks truly do have an allergy.
Researchers don't really know for sure how many Americans, let alone how many women, have food allergies, but estimates are that about 35 million people, or between 1 and 2 percent of the population, are affected. Others have allergy-like symptoms that are caused by something other than an allergy. Research indicates that the public's perception of food allergies is actually quite different from reality, says Daryl Altman, M.D., an allergist and immunologist and director of Allergy Information Services, an allergy consulting service in Lynbrook, New York. In a study, Dr. Altman and her colleagues found that 13.9 percent of 3,700 U.S. households reported that at least one person in the household had a food allergy. When you develop a food allergy, there's an actual shift in the functioning of your immune system.