Food intolerance! An excuse I used quiet often to avoid drinking milk during my childhood. My parents were never the wiser, until my brothers came to the scene. They knew that the whole food intolerance drama was exactly that, a lie!! Yes, siblings!!

But sometimes I thank them for making me gulp down a carton of milk over a bet (and then went behind my back and told my parents!! Grr!!). Why? Because otherwise I would have grown up to be one among the many who use food intolerance an excuse  to avoid different types of food from their diet.

A sexy picture of the skinny Kate moss or Paris Hilton is all that is needed for many teenagers and grown ups to jump into the bandwagon of eating disorders. As if bulimia and Anorexia was not enough, it looks like we have crafted yet another tricky façade behind which we can follow an unbalanced diet. Food intolerance!

But it is important to be able to detect the authenticity of a food intolerance case, especially when it comes from your family or friends. If its genuine, then you need to remove the food from the diet cos continuous exposure to the food can lead to long term and short term health problems. But if its not then its high time the person gets to know about the importance of a balanced diet and the harm they are inflicting on themselves.

Fighting Food Intolerance!

Keep a food diary
Keep a food diary, where in you can scribble down what you had for the day. Do this for your children too. This way it is easy for us to track the food that causes the reactions.

Determine the symptoms of food intolerance.
The most common symptoms for food intolerance are nausea, bloating, abdominal pain and diarrhea, which can begin hours or days after eating or drinking the food in question. The severity of symptoms also depends on the amount of the specific food one has consumed.

Consult a Doctor
Act immediately once you have detected the symptoms. The doctor will then be able to refer to your food diary and spot and remove the specific food from your diet. This is the most common treatment for food intolerance.

Replace the food
The next step would be, reshaping your diet by resorting to substitutes for the food you are intolerant to. E.g.- If you are lactose intolerant you can substitute milk with soy milk or rice milk.

So, remember that it is easy to lie about food intolerance but it can often lead to a very unhealthy diet! So buckle up and cross your heart and repeat after me. “I will not lie about food intolerance nor will I let my family or friend do the same”:-)..goood!!! Now go ahead, spy on food intolerance!

Image Credit

http://www.faqs.org

http://inmagine.com