If you have a food allergy you’re not alone.
A new report out of Dalhousie University has found millions of Canadians do.
Food Professor Sylvain Charlebois with the Agri-Food Analytics Lab tells our newsroom roughly 3 million Canadians have an allergy and 7 million experience food intolerances.
“Essentially a food allergy would be life threatening, whereas an intolerance would bring discomfort temporarily or chronically,” Charlebois explains.
The lab teamed up with Food Allergies Canada for the study. About 48 per cent of Canadians who responded said their food intolerance was self-diagnosed.
Charlebois says most Canadians learned about their sensitivities recently.
“Of the people who have claimed that they have an allergy or intolerance, 56 per cent of them have actually noticed that they were allergic or were intolerant in the last five years,” Charlebois says. “In the last five years a lot more people have become conscious of some condition they had, they actually did some research, they looked into it.”
He attributes some of the awareness to the pandemic as more Canadians have become health conscious along with having better access to food information.
“Because of our acute interest in public health in the last twenty months because of the pandemic. I think there is a lot of interest in looking into some information related to your health conditions, symptoms, and things like that, I think people are more aware than before.”
But he cautions there is still more work to do as many people have been getting their food delivered since 2020.
Charlebois says that makes it difficult for you to assess the health risks that might be related to a specific dish. In a restaurant, for example, you could ask a server for more information.
He adds that’s something you might want to keep in mind for Halloween.
If you’re passing out candy he recommends finding treats that have a label included on individual packages to help kids and their parents know it’s a safe snack.
