Diagnosing Food Allergies

Proper food allergy diagnosis is extremely important to identify a food that may cause reactions with future ingestion and to protect against unnecessary avoidance if allergy is not present. Our team of medical experts will spend significant time reviewing a detailed history and listen to your concerns about your child’s symptoms.

What Is a Food Allergy?

A food allergy causes rapid onset and reproducible symptoms with each ingestion. Some children may have mild symptoms such as itching or skin rash. Others can experience life-threatening reactions such as anaphylaxis, which can cause progressive breathing difficulty, vomiting and passing out. The clinical history is the most important part of the evaluation for possible food allergy.

Eight foods cause more than 90% of all food allergies:

Food allergies can potentially occur to any food, and we can evaluate for all suspected causes of a reaction. One of the aspects our medical team will focus on is the details surrounding the symptoms that occurred, timing of onset, duration and any treatment that was given. Food allergy reactions are reproducible, and a thorough history of other ingestion of the same or similar foods is very useful in diagnosing allergy.

Our experts are well versed in the many symptoms or other conditions that can mimic food allergy and help families not only understand when a food allergy is not present, but take time to explain why your child may be having certain symptoms.