How did people with food allergies/intolerance cope in the past

[Turning25]

I've got coeliac disease, and am lactose intolerant along with it (very common to be both) DH has a severe nut allergy.

We were talking today about how people would have coped 50, 100, 200 years ago.

My gran (coeliac) told me she used to have gluten free bread in tins, and I've read that doctors used to prescribe a diet of banana for coeliac disease but not sure how true that is!

I suppose nuts maybe weren't so common 200 years ago? So DH wouldn't have died? I assume I'd have died from malnutrition in medival times?

Googling it is a bit overwhelming! Is there anyone who had older relatives with food allergies who could ask them?

Thank you

I figure a lot of children who 'choked' on peanuts back in the day were having anaphylaxis but the symptoms weren't known at the time. Both my grandmothers were so risk averse around nuts and kids because of stories they'd heard in their own childhoods in the 1910s.

When I was growing up (I'm 65) I didn't know anyone with any type of food allergy, (nor did I know anyone who had chronic illness from their food). It really does seem to be much more prevalent in the modern world. Of course we ate more simply, although we did eat UPF even then, but more people prepared their own food rather than rely on convenience meals. Admittedly I grew up in a small town but I never heard of anyone who was even allergic to nuts, and there were certainly no restrictions placed on the food you could consume at school.

For a start, wheat in medieval times was very different to the wheat of the past 50 -100 years. So many more people are intolerant now to wheat because of how it’s grown and modified to be more profitable.
You may well not have been coeliac at all 200 year ago

Nut allergies are still relatively rare, but due to their seriousness, significant rules are often in place. In 14 years of parenting I have only had 1 child in our direct orbit with an actual nut allergy. But even just 1 or 2 in a school of 500 is enough for most schools to go nut free.

It is also absolutely true that genetics play a huge role and local diets would therefore have played to this. Dh is of Greek descent. He is mildly dairy intolerant. Dd is more so. Our doctor tells us this is not unusual. Interestingly, even when she was overloaded and therefore hugely sensitive to all dairy, dd has always had no problems with proper Greek feta made with sheep or goats milk. Possibly coincidentally, dh's wider family are not huge cheese eaters (although they do love a good bechamel or cheese sauce).

My dad was diagnosed with Coeliac disease back in the dark ages (the 1990s). He was given food vouchers to get GF flour to make his own bread with. It was hard to find anything that didn't contain gluten in those days. It was a miserable time for him. Before that people just got sick and died.

I am in my 60s diagnosed with dermatitis herpetiformis ( gluten intolerant) later in life. A few of my siblings also diagnosed and others diagnosed with coeliac disease..all after 50. My Gran died with stomach cancer at 54 and my mum says she always had issues with her stomach and never felt well. She was an extremely thin woman. My aunt ( her dd) died with bowel cancer and also constantly said: l can't eat that it doesn't agree with me etc. Never totally well with low energy / stomach pain. Looking back it seems obvious they were both coeliac as doctor has said to us we had the genes but something needed to trigger it which happened sometime in our 50s to each one of us.
Funny enough l have always loved bananas even as a child!!

Lactose intolerance is incredibly common around the world - something like 68%. The only population that has a low occurrence is people of European descent. Of course, the range of reactions are on a spectrum and not that same as an allergy.

As far as peanut allergy goes, there is some evidence that early exposure in small amounts reduces the occurrence of the allergy.

Most allergies are caused by pretty standard fare (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy) so I don't think increased access to foreign food is causing an increase in allergies. People have sought out exotic food for centuries so access has increased but not the desire to eat something different from what's locally on offer.

A lot of Asian people cannot tolerate alcohol in the same way people of European decent do. In Asia they learned to purify water by making tea, in Europe we made alcohol instead.

I think lots of people would have died in childhood or have been a 'sickly child'.

Anaphylaxis probably had many women hung for witchcraft.

The nut thing and not eating 'local' species is interesting. Peanut allergy is common in the west but virtually unknow in China.

We have so much exposure to imported foods that our bodies are encountering food out parents and grandparents didn't even see let alone sample.

@OhBling I don't know about sheep's milk but goats' milk has less lactose than cows' milk.

People in general often died fairly young for a number of diseases. Diabetes was a fatal disease until the 1920s.

A lot of kids who died young were just "sickly" children and many will have been from allergies and intolerances along with asthma and some other things that would be seen as minor today.

Child mortality rates were horrific really not that long ago.

Try to avoid allergens and prepare allergy medicine in case of emergencies.

I know 2 people (older adults) who have anaphylaxis to peanuts/cashews and Brazil nuts respectively who have never been formally diagnosed and don't carry epipens. They just had a few increasing worse reactions and stopped eating them. Although risky, it is possible to manage an allergy that way.

I was born in 1957. I used to have an allergic reaction to Brazil nuts. Wheezing, breathlessness, sneezing, itching throat. The reaction would last an hour or so and gradually subside. Every Christmas I'd manage to eat something which contained Brazil nut, and I'd have that reaction. My parents would laugh at me and tell me to get a drink of water. My mum would tell me to stop eating things with nuts in. Also had asthma that went undiagnosed or treated until a particularly scary attack when I was eleven when I was taken to the GP and prescribed an inhaler. Prior to that I would go and sit in the cool outside toilet, leaning forward and meditating to control and calm my breathing. I'd be alone out there for ages. My parents weren't used to the NHS being free and used to think of Drs as gods.

@starstar84 I think your observation carries a lot of weight.
Again, something that will hopefully be studied and shared further.
Oral health is probably the starting point. Different people have different microbiomes in their mouth, some more beneficial than others. Some bad for health in general. Partly genetic, partly due to lifestyle. By lifestyle I mean, primarily diet. This has a direct link to gut health with its own ideal bacterial environment balance.
My perception is that, historically, most local diets would have had some sort of fermented foods. Be it diary (something similar to kefir for example), vegetables (pickles), fish (maybe not fermented but air dried similar to ham), fruit juice such as grapes fermented before they turn to wine and so on. I don't have much knowledge on specific foods but it is possible various fermentation processes (invented for preserving food or maybe for taste) were very beneficial to the local population in terms if gut health. Obviously the quality of the fresh food matters a lot, do you start with good quality milk, you get good quality bacteria from your yoghurt.
So essentially you'd maintain an optimal gut environment for all the family.
Sugar in modern foods is probably a very bad disruptor as it can cause bad oral bacteria very, very quickly. Which can snowball.

I'm 39 and I've never met or spoken to anyone who has a nut allergy, and I work in food production and selling where I see hundreds of people each month and it would be normal for someone with allergies to enquire about ingredients etc.
I've had people ask who are gluten intolerant, (not celiac), dairy intolerant or onions. Never with a real 'I will die if I eat this' allergy for anything.
We still observe all rules and regs regarding allergies as it is so serious when it goes wrong, it doesn't mean that nut allergies are statistically widespread though, we just think it's worth making rules to not kill people even if it doesn't happen often.

Of course people with severe allergies might well just avoid small businesses like mine and stick to packaged commercial products as its not worth the risk so skewing my data! But I've still never met anyone on a personal level with a nut allergy.
Lots of 'avoid glutens' people but not celiac level.

Just thought of beer! I wonder if that makes any difference. Not consumed by children or as many women as men. Does it do much to men's digestive system and would any negative changes be passed on at the pro-creation stage? Or is it a 'superfood'?

I'll stop now, but one last thought. Local pure honey was probably part of older diets. Which maybe helped for a more robust immune system.

My 70 year old mum has coeliac disease, not diagnosed until her late 20s but she said as a child sometimes all she could eat was chopped tomatoes because her stomach hurt so bad. So I guess some people would have avoided the foods that gave them issues as much as they could but mostly they would have died as children with failure to thrive (for intolerances) or died from allergic reactions when young. There would have been less coeliacs at least because not as many would have survived long enough or been healthy enough (it affects fertility) to have children so wouldn't have passed their genes on.

DS has a dairy allergy- not anaphylactic but gives him terrible eczema, a pouring nose and an awful stomach. Looking back there was a boy at my primary school who were always snotty with terrible dry, cracked hands. In hindsight, it may well have been allergy related and that would have been my son had we not known what caused it. So I think a lot of the non fatal allergies/intolerances would have just been overlooked.

My family has a history of dairy allergy leading to related problem with eczema, asthma and being very snotty. Sounds like they just suffered as they didn't understand it was the dairy. I was diagnosed as a baby in the 80s and when family saw the effect cutting it out had on me, they tried it and it changed their lives. It honestly sounds barbaric what my dad went through as a child. And all the time his mum was encouraging him to drink a daily glass of milk for his health!

When I was young there seemed to be a lot of talk from older generations about nuts being a real choking risk and how children often died from choking on nuts. I always wondered if some were actually allergic reactions.

I understand children can choke and advice like cuttingbup grapes is life saving, but no one seems to talk about nuts any more.

If you're talking 100 years ago or more, it was easier to avoid foods that 'didn't agree with you' as there weren't all the hidden ingredients you find in all but completely unprocessed food nowadays. People ate what was available, diets were routine, only changing with the seasons, so there was less chance of coming across new ingredients that might cause a reaction. Also people tended to eat full meals, at home - there wasn't 'snacking on the go' that would expose you to others' food.

With Coeliacs, , gps used to prescribe bread, pasta, etc. Only stopped recently as these products became more widespread on supermarket shelves.

Growing up, don’t recall people having allergies, or aware of them. You didn’t have to accommodate for different allergies at parties etc, maybe just ensure you had cheese sandwiches for the vegetarians. Food colourants were thought to cause problems, but you don’t hear that being discussed nowadays.

There is academic works on this.

Allergic reactions would have been seen in rashes and breathing difficulties (awareness of asthma goes way back) or deliberate poisioning. Classifying these reactions as allergic reactions didn't happen till the early 20th Century. (Which is when the terms allergy / allergic were introcduced by a German doctor.)

There's records of allergic reactions and food intolerance going as far back as Ancient Egypt. Advise to avoid certain foods also goes way back.

How ordinary mothers would have been treated if their children died from anaphylaxis I'm not sure. In the times wheb childhood and infant deaths were commonplace I don't think deaths were investigated - unless there cause to be suspicious. (Multiple similar deaths or been linked to the death of an "important" person.)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1743237/#:~:text=After%20returning%20from%20the%20Beagle,doctors%20failed%20to%20treat%20him.

I am gluten intolerant, cow’s milk intolerant and salicylate intolerant. All three have been inherited.

I think you’re right. Im sure a recent study was using small amounts of peanuts etc to try to help those with allergies and was proven successful which could be good news for the future.

Yes the microbiome is probably something massively underrated. C sections and the use of formula made from cows milk has all contributed to this too. I watched an interesting presentation about how to restore/improve the microbiome in babies by breastfeeding if you’ve had a c section.