Posted on June 9, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
How convenient.
All these food allergies have spawned a multi-million dollar niche food market. Annys Shin of
The Washington Post reports:
The market for food-allergy and intolerance products is projected to reach $3.9 billion this year, according to Packaged Facts, a New York research firm. And the market for gluten-free foods and drinks is expected to hit $1.3 billion by 2010, up from $700 million in 2006, according to research firm Mintel.
An estimated 12 million people in the United States have food allergies, and another 2 million have celiac disease, a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks itself when exposed to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. Those figures are expected to rise. The number of children with peanut allergies alone has doubled in the past decade. Food-induced anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic reaction, causes about 30,000 emergency room visits and 150 to 200 deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Medical experts don't know why the number of people with food allergies is increasing. Theories include reduced contact with germs, exposure to certain environmental pollutants and, in the case of peanut allergies, the way peanuts are processed and when they are introduced into people's diet. None of the theories is backed by much research.
"We don't know if some of them are true or there's some truth to all of them," said Marshall Plaut, chief of the allergic mechanisms section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
For more on this, visit our friends at
AllergyKids.com.
