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Batting clean-up on the food allergy roster is sesame seed and other seed allergies, but in at least one country, Israel, sesame allergy is number one. If you hung with me through the previous sections, you can probably guess why that is — the Israeli diet includes a lot of sesame seeds and oil.

In the United States, the medical community has witnessed a surge in sesame allergy over the past 10 to 20 years, and some allergists estimate that sesame may well now be in the top five bracket. One reason for this dramatic increase may be due at least in part to the introduction of more sesame in our diets. With restaurants offering sesame seed buns and bread sticks and the increased use of sesame oil in dressings and other food products, exposure is on the rise.

Other seed allergies, such as allergies to sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, and pumpkin seeds, do occur but are much less common, and most people with one seed allergy do not need to avoid all seeds.

For those with a genetic predisposition to allergies, the more fish they eat, the more likely they are to develop a fish allergy. Consequently, if you troll the globe and compare the prevalence of fish allergies in various countries, you find that countries that consume a lot of fish have a higher incidence of fish allergies than countries that consume less fish. Fish allergy is far more common, for example, in Japan and Scandinavian countries than it is in the United States.

As with the tree nut family, when you’re allergic to one fish you’re usually allergic to others, and your doctor is likely to recommend that you shun every member of the fish family.

Peanut allergy ranks about third on most top-food-allergy lists, but this ranking is misleading. Peanut allergy occurs in less than 1 percent of young children, but then becomes more common than milk and egg allergy as people outgrow those allergies. (You’re less likely to outgrow peanut allergy than you are to outgrow milk or egg allergy.) The medical community doesn’t have the statistics to know for sure, but more Americans may be allergic to peanut than to any other food.

Peanut allergy also earns a top spot on the common-food-allergy charts, due to the potential severity of its reactions. While milk Read the rest of this entry »