Recipe For Fighting Food Allergies

Some 11 million people in the U.S. suffer from food allergies, resulting in 30,000 visits to the emergency room every year.

"A lot of people don't appreciate how serious (food allergies) can be," says Dr. Hugh Sampson, a professor of pediatrics, allergy and immunology at the Mount Sinai school of Medicine in New York.

"They often think of people just getting a skin rash or some flushing, but it can actually lead to severe breathing difficulties and anaphylactic shock," Sampson told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith Tuesday.

And, Sampson adds, "Right now, the best prevention is education, trying to show people how to avoid the food; if they have an accidental ingestion, how to treat it. We arm them with medications and instructions on what to do.

"There are some new therapies coming down the pike, though. We are involved in clinical trials looking at different things to try to prevent people from having reactions."

Sampson explained that eight foods tend to be the main culprits, the source of 90 percent of food allergies: peanuts, shellfish, fish, tree nuts, also eggs, milk, wheat, and soy.

"We're trying to understand why these foods are the most common," Sampson says. "Milk, egg, and peanuts are the most common in very young children. Peanuts, nuts, fish, and shellfish are the most common as you get older.

"Most of the foods, such as milk, eggs, soy, wheat, about 80-85 percent of the children will outgrow as they reach the end of the first decade. Things such as peanuts, fish, nuts, shellfish, people tend not to outgrow. Although today we do know that about 20 percent of very young children will outgrow their peanut allergy."

Sampson observes that, "One of the big mysteries is why you develop your allergy when you do. Most food allergies are developed when you're very young, but we clearly see an older population developing some of these allergies, especially to some of the things we hadn't been exposed to as much, such as kiwi, papaya, those kinds of fruits."

As for symptoms: "Often times, when you first start out, you'll feel some itching in your mouth, some swelling in your mouth. Typically, you'll get flushing of the skin, hives, you may get breathing difficulties, wheezing, tightness in the throat. You could get crampy, abdominal pain, vomiting. And then you may actually start to feel dizzy from a drop in your blood pressure."