Parents from Britain are becoming increasingly overprotective over their children in terms of their diets. Rampant issues of allergy reactions cause parents to unknowingly starve their kids to alleviate their fears of unwanted effects. Scientists observe that the nutritional status of middle-class children are declining as a result of significant cuts of major food items such as dairy and wheat in their diets.
The issue can also be felt by families whose children genuinely suffer from allergic reactions. Allergies and intolerances now seem very ordinary that people do not take the associated conditions seriously anymore. Society continuously grow to be cynical towards the issue of allergy and allergic patients, says Tracey Brown, director of charity Sense about Science.
Numerous studies and home-testing kits are persuading families to avoid eating major food groups as these may cause allergies; however, no proven scientific data are present.
"I commonly see children who've been put onto unnecessarily restricted diets because their parents assume, in good faith, that they have allergies to multiple foods on the basis of 'allergy tests' which have no scientific basis," says Paul Seddon, paediatric allergist at the Alexandra Children's Hospital in Brighton.
The members of the British Society of Immunology iterate that allergy and intolerance are different, and that allergic sufferers may still eat food sparingly.
The issue of starvation due to fear of allergies are most commonly noted in families belonging to the middle-class. Malnutrition are now present in socioeconomic groups A and C, who are least expected to suffer from such, Brown tells Cheltenham Science Festival.
"You can't help but notice that in a nursery school in Dulwich [a leafy south east London suburb], children come out saying 'why haven't I got an allergy?' because they appear to be the only one," she says. "Whereas you don't get that appearing in Macclesfield [in north west England]."
In the early part of 2015, British people were found to be in the midst of an allergic epidemic. Approximately 21 million people suffer from a form of intolerance, including hayfever and food and drug reactions. Food businesses are driven to accurately label all their food products so as to prevent people from suffering from allergies and intolerance.
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