Hello, this is Monica Reinegel, and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast, Welcome.

It's very important for people with severe food allergies to avoid the foods that they're

allergic to.

For them, eating even a small amount of nuts or seafood by mistake could be life-threatening.

And in 2004, the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, that's a mouthful,

is put in place to make life just a little bit easier and safer for people with food allergies.

Specifically, it mandates that food labels must declare on packaged foods whether or not

the product might contain allergens from milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts,

wheat, and soybeans.

You probably noticed this information on packaged foods if you're a label reader, right,

underneath a list of ingredients, you might see something in bold type like contains,

milk, and eggs.

Even though we've identified over 200 different food allergens, these eight foods that I

just listed account for 90% of all food allergy reactions.

And in the industry, they're often referred to as the big eight.

But in fact, allergies to some of the big eight are a lot more common than others.

According to a new review in the journal Nutrition Today, milk or dairy is by far the most

commonly diagnosed food allergy, affecting about 2% of the adult population, or one out

of every 50.

Now the percentage of people who report being lactose intolerant is quite a bit higher than

that.

But it's important to distinguish between the two lactose intolerance, which is a reduced

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