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Allergies generally are increasing among western populations, to the point where any bad reaction to a particular food, even though encounters may be years apart, is most commonly written off as an "allergy". Yet food allergies can and do emerge without warning, even in adults.

It is important to distinguish between food allergies, food intolerances, and food poisoning. Food allergy symptoms will always take some form of immunological reaction: which only rarely includes gastric distress, colic, vomiting, or diarrhoea. Unlike food allergies, which always result from a hyper-immunological reaction, food intolerances never do; while different forms of food poisoning may result in symptoms ranging from vomiting to difficulty breathing to paralysis. For example, triggering a lactic allergy often results in a body rash, while lactic intolerance can cause abdominal bloating, diarrhoea, and general abdominal discomfort. The confusion is only increased by the high incidence of food poisoning caused by improper preparation of shellfish, a particularly common food allergen.

Food allergy symptoms in adults do vary more widely than those in younger children. In addition to the well-known skin rashes and various histamine reactions, including a hoarse and persistent coughing, a sudden stuffiness of the nose and sinuses, extreme swelling of the throat (laryngospasm), or respiratory reaction (anaphylaxis), adults can also exhibit muscle pain, shortness of breath, migraine, extreme sensitivity to light, or a sudden loss of energy. Usually the reaction occurs within an hour of having eaten the food, sometimes much quicker. For life-threatening situations, seek medical help immediately. Those with known severe food allergies will probably be issued an Epi-Pen or similar auto-injector, a one-time use syringe pre-loaded with a stop-gap dose of epinephrine which is intended to neutralise the reaction for long enough for emergency help to arrive.

While no research has confirmed a clear cause-effect relationship for adult-onset food allergies, several factors have been shown to be correlated. Chief among these are the monocultures which make up ever increasing percentages of the western diet: supported by the much higher percentages of corn, wheat (gluten), soy, and various preservative allergies in the adult population relative to food allergies found among younger children. Corn, wheat, and increasingly soy products make up enormous amounts of the western processed food diet most

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