Causes of Food Intolerance

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Food Intolerance is a condition that occurs when you are unable to digest a certain food properly. This is may be because of the lack of digestive enzymes for that specific food, or an insufficient ability to digest that particularly food. Without digestion, the food cannot be broken down, which can upset the body’s natural digestive pathway to cause a variety of unpleasant symptoms. Also, it has been suggested that our modernised life styles are to blame for the growing occurrence of food intolerance, reasons supporting this argument include: raised stress levels, increased use of antibiotics and contraceptive pill or daily exposure to chemicals in our food.

Who’s affected?

Food Intolerance has a strong genetic correlation; meaning that food intolerances tend to run in families. This is usually via autosomal recessive inheritance; for someone to be food intolerant both their parents should be a carrier (those who carry a gene trait but doesn’t display the trait) of the gene that causes the food intolerance. Moreover, certain food intolerances are more common in certain groups of people. For example, lactose intolerance has been found to be more prominent in Asian, African, Native American and Mediterranean populations compared to those of northern and western European descent.

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