Food allergies are very common nowadays in kids and adults, with eggs allergies being one of the most prevalent. When you have an egg allergy, your immune system does not recognise that the yolk and whites of an egg are safe and uses chemicals and antibodies to attack them. Although there is no sure-fire way to stop an egg allergy developing, there are some precautions you can take to minimize the risk. In any situation, avoiding or cutting down on your consumption of eggs will help.
Get Yourself Tested
The first and most important step to take when trying to handle and deal with an egg allergy is by making an appointment with your doctor to request an allergy test. Allergy tests not only help to identify and establish that you do definitely have an allergy to eggs, but also can help to pinpoint the proteins in eggs that you are allergic to and just how bad the allergy actually is.
Types of Allergy Testing
There are currently two different methods used for allergy testing – blood tests and skin tests. If your doctor decides that a blood test is the best way to test your allergy, they will take some blood, which will then have egg proteins injected into it that will show whether your blood produces the appropriate antibodies to fight and kill off the proteins. If they decide to conduct a skin test on you, they will take a selection of the individual proteins present in eggs and inject some underneath your skin. An allergist will then observe your skin for around 20 to 30 minutes to see if your skin becomes irritated or inflamed.
Change Your Diet
In most situations, your doctor will probably advise you to change your diet. Although eggs may be an obvious ingredient in certain food and meals; there are others in which they may be a less obvious and hidden ingredient. All food manufacturers must state whether or not their pre-packaged foods and meals include eggs or not. Therefore, it is up to you to read all the ingredients in food before preparing or eating it. While there may be obvious ingredients such as egg yolks, egg powder, egg whites, dried eggs and egg solids; there are also other less obvious ingredients such as ovomucin, phosvitin, apovitellenin, ovalbumin, globulin, livetin and albumin.
It could be that only a small amount of a particular ingredient or egg protein being present in a dish or food product will cause you to have a severe allergic reaction. Actual food that you should read the ingredient list carefully before consuming as they normally include eggs in some form include: egg rolls, donuts, battered meat, marshmallows, mayonnaise, cake icing and frosting, ice cream, custard, cakes, cookies, biscuits and meringue.
While avoiding egg products may be fine if you don’t like the taste of British Lion eggs or are not fussed about them; if you do like the taste of eggs, having this kind of allergy can be a problem. Fortunately there are a lot of egg-free alternatives available.
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