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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Ds's friend is allergic to all fruit?

107 replies

Frontier · 28/08/2014 16:21

Really? I've offered them strawberries. If he's really allergic, I'll offer something else (have already offered alternative fruit). Uf it's just that he doesn't fancy what's on offer he can go without!

Mum has never mentioned it but he is 14!

OP posts:
wheresthelight · 29/08/2014 17:08

My dd has a severe reaction to citric acid in fruit and minor one to the fructose. pineapple makes her look like she has been in a major car crash (she is 1)

LemonSquares · 29/08/2014 17:36

OAS - is very interesting.

In my 20's I had that reaction to uncooked banana - family thought I was mad - though I have hay fever since teens and have in 30's developed asthma.

Didn't touch them for a few years and then it was fed by a DC and found I was fine again.

DH is is same field as someone who is very allergic to all dairy - and people don't take it seriously as the poor chap frequently ends up rushed to hospital - though even there he hasn't always been safe as they given him medication coated in some diary derivative.

So I'd always assume the allergy is real - though I do know some people who claim reactions when they really aren't but why take a risk.

PPaka · 29/08/2014 19:13

Kid today told me he was allergic to gingerbread biscuits. "Really, that's interesting" I said
"Yes, cos once I had them and I sneezed loads!!"

myusernameis · 29/08/2014 23:53

kiritekanawa that's interesting about the gut flora. Personally I don't fit the bill with my diet and I have loads of allergies but I suppose allergies have been around for longer than sliced bread so it makes sense not everyone with allergies would have the same diet. Or could the diet of my grandparents affect my gut flora?

kiritekanawa · 30/08/2014 11:39

myusernameis - gut flora certainly isn't the only explanation at all. Do you have an atopic family history (i.e. lots of people who have had hayfever and asthma etc going back generations)? There's undoubtedly fairly clear genetic susceptibility to allergy.

However stuff like gut flora and historical contingency may explain a lot of the variance that isn't accounted for by straight genetics - i.e. why some people end up allergic to a lot of stuff and others in the same family don't.

So, I'm a C section and my sister isn't. We have the same atopic family history, but I also moved hemispheres as a young adult, and got horrendous hayfever. So now I'm allergic to all sorts of stuff, and she isn't. Two small risk factors that change how our mature immune systems work.

The diet of your grandparents could certainly affect your immune system, and indirectly your gut flora.

Various studies show that nutritional status and metabolic status of mothers affect baby's immunological, metabolic and cardiovascular health in later life, e.g. the outcomes of the Dutch famine at the end of WW2. So if your parents have poor nutritional status, smoking-related cardiovascular disease and pre-diabetes, and have a baby, and if that baby then has pre-diabetes and chronic inflammation when she in turn has a child, then yes, indirectly but by fairly direct mechanisms, the health of your grandparents affects you. It's also passed down the male line - study of swedish farmers going back centuries showed that grandfathers who go through a famine have grandsons who had higher relative risk of death .

Similarly, indirectly you get your grandparents' gut flora, not just culturally by having aspects of the same diet, but you get your gut flora from your mother during normal delivery, or if you're born by c-section you get your gut flora mostly from your mother's skin (which is why being born by C-section you have abnormal gut flora, and - assuming the link with immunity - C section is a risk factor for irritable bowel type diseases, and allergy).

Also there's "normal" food (a lot of which is quite surprisingly highly processed) and "McDonalds" levels of processed - I think that "normal" food is probably processed enough to really mess with gut flora.

I grew up eating very healthily, with parents who cared a lot about nutrition, no salt, not much fat, etc - but we still ate white pasta and shop bread, and looking back it was a very low-fibre diet compared to what it could have been, even though it was a high-fibre diet compared to nearly everyone we knew.

GloriousGloria · 30/08/2014 11:48

My DS is allergic to lots of fruits and strawberries bring out the worst reaction.

He is 13 he isn't hankering for a biscuit instead he is allergic.

Perhaps offer him some crackers maybe Xx

springdrinks · 30/08/2014 11:54

DH is pleased by this thread! He has OAS for all fruits (except either cooked or frozen) and fruit type veg, eg tomato, avocado, cucumber and pepper. He can eat lettuce, cold carrot etc. MIL didn't believe him until his lips doubled in size after eating an apple.

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