Take 4: Preventing food allergy

While food allergy and intolerance are different, the clinical presentations are sometimes hard to distinguish

What is the difference between food allergy and food intolerance?

That’s a question that Dr Preeti Joshi, a paediatric allergy and immunology specialist at the Children’s Hospital Westmead in Sydney, is asked frequently.

“Food allergy is an immune-based response in relation to that food, so the immune system has to be involved,” she says. “An intolerance is a non-immune based reaction to a food and is an all-encompassing term which may be related to a toxin in that food, or might be related to some other adverse reaction, which isn’t related to the immune system.”

But the clinical differences between allergy and intolerance are sometimes hard to distinguish.

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