A history of food allergy

Most of the investigators involved in studying different forms of food allergy are unaware that these syndromes were not a significant part of allergic disease as little as 40 years ago. Thus, a major focus of this report is to understand when and why different forms of food allergy became common. Focusing on (i) peanut as a major cause of rapid reactions in subjects with IgE antibodies to protein antigens; (ii) eosinophilic esophagitis in children and adults where the dominant foods are cow's milk and wheat and the immune responses include high titer IgG4 to protein antigens with only modest titers of slgE; and (iii) delayed reactions to red meat which occur in subjects who have had bites from Lone Star ticks and have high titers of IgE ab to the oligosaccharide galactose alpha-1,3-galactose, or alpha-gal. The approximate dates for increase of these three forms of food allergy are 1980; 1995; and 2010. In each case, these dates are long after the rise in allergic rhinitis or the rise in asthma among school children. A further striking feature of the history is that the hypotheses about the causes of increases in these three syndromes are completely different.