common food allergies

If you're hosting dinner, find out whether any of your guests have food allergies, and if they do, try one of our featured allergy-alert recipes.

The dessert table may be off limits to people with food allergies, unless you provide alternatives.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The holidays should be a time to relax. But for someone with food allergies, completely letting your guard down during dinner or dessert—even for just one bite—could result in major discomfort, on in extreme cases, a trip to the emergency room. That's no way to celebrate Turkey Day!

THE DETAILS: Approximately 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies, but eight foods account for nearly 90 percent of all food-allergic reactions, according to The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). These include milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts (walnut, cashew, and such), fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat.

While those are the more traditional food allergies, there are newer ones on the rise, too, including kiwi, sesame seed, and cilantro, explains Clifford W. Bassett, MD, a fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, and assistant clinical professor of medicine at The Long Island College Hospital SUNY at Brooklyn. There's no clear-cut, proven explanation for the rise in food allergies, but several theories exist. One is that we're exposing infants and young children to high allergy and/or new foods at earlier ages. "Even something as simple as peanut or nuts maybe be present in various creams, lotions, skin moisturizers, used in infants and young children," says Dr. Bassett.

Another concern? We're too clean freak-ish for our own good. "Oversanitizing the environment and keeping very young children away from pets, day care, and individuals with colds, for example, may result in a greater risk of allergies, according to the 'hygiene hypothesis,'" Dr. Bassett explains.

Obviously, due to the Internet, individuals are being more educated about food allergy-related symptoms, diagnostic tests, and food allergy action plans prepared by food allergy savvy allergy specialists.