MaHB Food

Why developing a sudden allergy to food intolerances might be healthier than you think.
By Fay Khoo

If you, like me, have a happy, healthy relationship with wheat, gluten and all things carbohydrate, you will doubtless have dismissed the current spate of food “intolerances”—as I have—as a means to avoid foods without the stigma of being a “dieter”. There’s no more efficacious a way to forestall exhortations by well-meaning friends and family to consume mountains of food than by proclaiming oneself a pescatorian or a vegetarian, just as I’m certain friends have barricaded themselves against my excessively enthusiastic encouragement to partake in noodles by billing themselves as gluten-intolerant.

The reality is only 25 percent of people who believe they have a food allergy, as evidenced by a 2009 study in the LA Times, actually have one. The rest, or much of the remaining 75 percent at least, sidestep foods they have convinced themselves are bad for them by labelling themselves as intolerant, not least to avoid judgement by their peers or being preached to about the importance of including carbohydrates, or dairy, or gluten to ensure a well-balanced diet.

In an era where living well, eating well and being well is the mantra du jour, there’s no better subterfuge for dieting—now very gauche, if not taboo—than to develop an intolerance to a food group. In extremis, eating disorders can also be conveniently hidden under this cloak undetected, until it’s possibly too late. When celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Megan Fox champion wheat- and lactose-free diets, and killjoy cookbooks eschew sugar, wheat and joie de vivre in general, it’s a great excuse to jump on that teetotalling bandwagon with impunity.

But even if a food intolerance does genuinely exist, it’s quite possibly transient and the food in question can be consumed in limited quantities without causing any great danger. I’ve been told countless times that wheat is anathema for my blood group (O), but my longstanding love affair with noodles has yet to kill me. Just as blood tests are still unable to definitively pinpoint an allergy (the only way to do it is to be exposed to the suspected foods and to rule each one out until the culprit is identified), gastronomic hypochondriacs who self-diagnose and cut out entire food groups—whether in a mistaken effort to not get ill from said food or to lose weight—are in real danger of putting their health in jeopardy.

Our grandparents never complained of food intolerances, and never got ill from eating certain foods, and I suspect that’s because they consumed everything in moderation, had a balanced diet, and didn’t waste an inordinate amount of time worrying about what might or might not make them bloated. Does that make me unsympathetic? Probably. But since Peter Gibson, professor of gastroenterology at Monash University and director of the GI Unit at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, has exhaustively studied gluten sensitivity and concluded that—celiacs aside—gluten intolerance quite possibly doesn’t exist, I’m sticking to my guns and saying just harden the hell up.