Food sensitivity differ from country to country--study

For the study, Dr Peter Burney from Imperial College London in the UK and team studied more than 4,500 adults from 13 countries.

The researchers found that nearly 25 percent of the people living in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, had higher prevalence of food sensitivity as compared to people in Iceland and Spain, both 11 percent.

Lead author of the study, Dr Peter Burney says that Britain and France were next at 14 percent each and Reykjavik, Iceland at eight percent. Interestingly, countries tended to be similar in the specific culprit foods.

Details of study
The researchers of the study, published in the journal Allergy, checked subjects blood for antibodies against variety of foods. This gauges food sensitivity, which refers to an immune system response to a food's proteins.

It does not necessarily mean that every person who is sensitive to a food has a clinical allergy -- which means that a person has specific symptoms, like wheezing, hives, swelling or digestive problems, after eating the food.

Highest prevalence of food sensitivity nations
The findings suggest that Britons are some of the least likely to suffer from food sensitivity reactions as compared to people from United States, Germany, Italy, and Norway.

Apart from Americans, people living in Germany, Italy and Norway had the highest prevalence of food sensitivity, with about 22 percent of people from each country showing antibodies against some type of food.

The lowest rates were seen in Iceland with 11 percent, Spain with 11 percent, France and the United Kingdom both with around 14 percent.

Most common causes of sensitivity
They also found that different nations tended to have exactly same specific foods that lead to reactions such as hazelnuts (seven percent), peaches (five percent), shrimp (five percent), wheat (five percent) and apples (five percent.)

Some of the food items such as cow's milk, fish, and eggs which are generally thought to be foods items most like to trigger allergic reactions, turned out to be least common causes of sensitivity, researchers found.

The scientists were not able to figure out the exact reason behind why countries were similar in the patterns of food sensitivity.

But they noted that in the typical diets of the various nations studied, pointing out that the overall consumption of food in a specific country does not determine the prevalence of allergies to it.