Food sensitivities

Food sensitivities or food intolerance is a detrimental reaction, often delayed, to a food, beverage, food additive, or compound found in foods that produces symptoms in one or more body organs and systems, but generally refers to reactions other than food allergy. Food hypersensitivity is used to refer broadly to both food intolerances and food allergies.

Symptom recognition

 * The International Consensus Criteria lists sensitivities to food, medications, odours or chemicals as an optional criteria for diagnosis, under the section C. Immune, gastro-intestinal and genitourinary Impairments.
 * The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note ME/CFS patients can have "allergies and sensitivities to foods, odors, chemicals, or noise."

Prevalence

 * In a 2001 Belgian study, 48.5% of patients meeting the Fukuda criteria and 54.8% of patients meeting the Holmes criteria, in a cohort of 2073 CFS patients, reported new sensitivities to food or drugs.