Parents ‘Wrongly Blaming Allergies for Everything’

The number of mothers who believe their baby is allergic to some foods is out of all proportion to the actual number.

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have found that, contrary to popular belief, the rate of food hypersensitivity is not rising.

In the three-year Pounds 600,000 research funded by the Food Standards Agency, Dr Carina Venter studied nearly all the babies born in one year on the Isle of Wight and found that parents were too quick to assume their child had an allergy.

In fact the rate had not increased since a previous study 20 years ago. Dr Venter said: “Mums tend to put down every rash, tummy ache, diarrhoea and crying to food allergy or intolerance.”

Of the 807 babies in the study, more than a third of their parents, 272, said their child was allergic or intolerant to one or more foods. The actual figure was less than 60.

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