If you’re not allergic to a food itself, you may be allergic to a food additive: a coloring, flavoring, stabilizer, emulsifier or preservative. While considerably fewer people are allergic to additives than to food, additives are still significant cause of adverse reactions.

One doctor tells of a member of her family who experienced sudden weakness, extreme fatigue and a swollen throat whenever eating cornflakes or instant potatoes. The problem was neither corn nor potatoes, however, but BHA and BHT, two common preservatives.

Needless to say, a food such as cornflakes is apt to contain not one but several additives, any or all of which can cause the problem. Dr. Bernard J. Freedman, of King’s College Hospital in London, found that 30 out 272 of his asthmatic patients reacted to orange drinks, even though they aren’t allergic to oranges.

As it turned out, most of those people were actually reacting to triad of additives commonly found in yellow hued, acidic beverages: tartrazine (FD&C Yellow No.5), sodium benzoate and sulfur dioxide (Clinical Allergy, September, 1977). A lot of folk are in the same predicament.

The late Benjamin Feingold, M.D., author of Why Your Child Is Hyperactive and The Feingold Cookbook for Hyperactive Children, believe that additives are the most common cause of all adverse reactions, affecting not just childhood behavior but every system in the body. ”Any problem can result from exposure to additives,” Dr. Feingold told us.

”Hives are common. Nail problems. Asthma. Rashes of all kind. Food chemical are no different than drugs,” Dr. Feingold said. ’”If a youngster takes a drug and reacts, no one is surprised. But if he or she eats a food chemical and reacts, why be surprised? What’s the difference?”

As a matter of fact, food additive allergy is often linked to drug allergy. Eggs dipped in penicillin, to retard spoilage, can be a problem for people who are highly allergic to penicillin. And people who are allergic to aspirin also tend to react to tartrazine, one of the most common artificial food colorings.

Tartrazine is present in thousands of food, beverages, cosmetics and drugs. Distressing reactions to tartrazine commonly include asthma, coughing fits and difficulty in breathing, facial swelling and purpura (broken capillaries beneath the skin, such as bleeding gums and bruises).

But you don’t necessarily have to be allergic to aspirin to react to tartrazine. All told, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates 100,000 people, many of them children, are allergic to tartrazine.

To alert fellow doctors that the yellow dye causes many problems among allergic people, two physicians from the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania reported the case of the young man who landed in a hospital emergency room every time he swallowed anything containing yellow dye.

It all started when the 25 year old medical student – who had a life history of allergy and asthma – eat some cauliflower with yellow cheese sauce at dinner. He hadn’t even finished his meal when his become short of breath and felt his throat tighten up.

Before he knew it, he broke out in hives and couldn’t swallow at all. His wife, a registered nurse, gave him a shot of adrenalin, to no avail. In the hospital, doctor brought him around with more adrenalin, oxygen and emergency medication. Five weeks later, the young man ate three yellow jelly beans.

A little while later, during his regular hospital rounds, he felt light headed, his scalp itched and his throat began to close up. Again, and appeared and his blood pressure dropped severely. Adrenaline and medication once again put things right. Two days later – while still hospitalized – he reacted once more, to a drug containing yellow dye.

Now, of course, he knows better and stays away from anything he suspect of containing yellow dye. Robert E. Desmond, M.D., and Joseph J. Trautlein, M.D., the two physicians reporting the story, wrap up by alerting other doctors to the ubiquitous nature of actions, especially in allergy prone people (Annals of Allergy, February, 1981).

As of a couple of years ago, FD&C Yellow No.5 has been removed from any drugs used to treat allergies. Tartrazine may be the most notorious food dye, but it’s only one of several additives with allergy provoking potential. Any of the food dyes listed in Table can trigger an allergy.

That’s because many artificial colors (like so many other food additives) are made from coal tar, a substance with a special knack for making people sick. But additives not made from coal tar aren’t any better; they’re made from petroleum. Bananas, apples, pears, oranges and tomatoes, for instance, are usually picked before they’re ripe and gassed with ethylene, a petroleum based chemical that hastens ripening.

Now, you might expect to encounter coal tar and petroleum in auto exhaust, printer’s ink, dry cleaning solvents, carpeting, clothing dye and even perfume – explaining any reactions to fumes from those items. But as food ingredients, the same chemicals can catch you offguard.

And if you’re allergic to petroleum in the air – any kind of air pollution for that matter – you’re also apt to react to the chemicals you swallow. Sulfur additives are a case in point. Sulfur dioxide, a main component of air pollution, is a major threat to anyone with asthma.

In the form of metabisulfite and other compounds used to preserve foods, beverages and drugs, sulfur is equally liable to trigger asthma, flushing or even shock in allergic people. But sulfites aren’t always listed on food labels. What’s more, sulfites may be added to some batches of a food but no others.

In a factory, for instance, potato chips that haven’t been fully processed by the end of the day may be sprayed with metabisulfite to prevent browning until processing can be completed the following morning. Identical but fully processed batches of chips may escape the spray – explaining why you may react to a particular brand of chip one time but not another.

Other foods are treated with sulfur with sulfur as a matter of course. Unless otherwise specified, for instance, all dried fruits are automatically treated with sulfur dioxide. So is molasses. Look for fruits and molasses that are clearly labeled ”unsulfured.”

Many wines are laced with sulfites. Unfortunately, wine and other alcoholic beverages are not required to have their ingredients listed on their labels. (sulfur dioxide levels of samples of several brands of wine are given in table). Even if food labels listed sulfur additives, not all food comes in a box, can or bag.

Supermarkets frequently spray metabisulfite or sodium bisulfite on fruit and vegetables to keep them fresh and attractive looking. Fish may be dipped in a solution of metabisulfite to keep letruce and other produce from browning as they sit under the lights of a salad bar.

All that can lead you to mistakenly suspect a fruit, vegetable, fish or salad green as the cause of your allergy when the food isn’t the problem at all. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is perhaps the most famous instigator of ”restaurant allergies.” Have you ever gone out to eat Chinese food to only to come home feeling headachy and nauseated?

Or flushed, warm and numb throughout your arms and chest – maybe with a pain in your chest or stomach? Chances are you had a brush with ”Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.” The root of the problem is actually MSG, a flavor enhancer used not only in Chinese but also in Japanese and South Asian cuisine, and in many packages foods as well.

In fact, MSG is sold in supermarket spice rack tight next to the marjoram and mustard seed. For years, MSG reactions were dismissed by doctors as merely imaginary, or at most of the esophagus. Then reports began to appear in medical journals telling of people who developed more than just annoying numbness – some experienced asthma and serious breathing difficulties alter eating anything containing MSG.

Finally, two doctors in England discovered that the a fellow physician had a bona fide allergy to MSG: he lost all felling in his hands and feet – once for three years straight. He discovered, though, that if he stayed away from certain foods, especially those containing MSG, he could prevent the problem entirely.

His two doctor friends ran him through a battery of food challenges and lab tests. Nerve tests showed that, for one thing, the numbness was quite real. And blood tests showed every time he ate MSG and felt numb, his blood IgA levels rose – often regarded as a sign of allergy (Annals of Allergy, February, 1982).

There are few reliable tests for food allergy; there are none for additive allergy. The only way to test for allergy to an additive is to eliminate it just as you eliminate milk or wheat. To avoid additives, though, your label reading skills have to be doubly sharp.

Sulfur Dioxide in Wines

The following table shows the amount of sulfur dioxide found in several common domestic wines, based on laboratory analysis

Source: Preservatives Discovered in Wines.
Note: Only single samples of each product were tested; bottle to bottle variations may be considerable.

Common Food Source of Artificial Coloring

Coloring	Used in Foods
FD&C Yellow No. 5	Candy; canned fruit and fruit juice drinks; baked goods; nonalcoholic beverages; breakfast cereals; gelatins; puddings, custards; chewing gum; canned vegetables and vegetable juice; soup, soup mixes; alcoholic beverages; milk products; sugars, frosting; snack foods
FD&C Red No. 40	Alcoholic beverages; baked goods; canned fruits and fruit juice drinks; nonalcoholic beverages; candy; sugars, frosting; gelatins, puddings; soup, soup mixes; chewing gum; milk products; snack foods
FD&C Yellow No. 6	Nonalcoholic beverages; candy; baked goods; sugars; frosting; gelatins; puddings; custards; poultry, poultry products; meat, meat, meat products; canned fruits and fruits juice drinks; condiments, relish; milk products; breakfast cereals
FD&C Red No. 3	Baked goods; candy; meat, meat products; canned fruits and fruits juice drinks; gelatins; puddings; custards; breakfast cereals; chewing gum; Nonalcoholic beverages; frozen dairy desserts; sugars; frosting; fish, seafood; milk products; snack foods
FD&C Blue No. 1	Canned fruits and fruits juice drinks; candy; baked goods; gelatins, puddings, custards; chewing gum; Nonalcoholic beverages; sugars; frosting; alcoholic beverages; frozen dairy desserts; milk products; meat, meat products
FD&C Blue No. 2	Candy; chewing gum; baked goods; frozen dairy desserts; sugars; frosting; coffee drinks; exotic teas; nonalcoholic beverages; milk products; gelatins, puddings, custard
FD&C Green No. 3	Canned fruits and fruit juice drink; baked goods; nonalcoholic beverages; candy; alcoholic beverages; gelatins; puddings; custards; frozen dairy desserts

Source: Adapted from “Food Colors,” by Institute of Food Technologists’ Expert Panel on Food Safety & Nutrition and the Committee on Public Information, Food Technology, July, 1980.

Common Food Source of Flavor Additives

To eliminate flavor additives, choose a diet from the last group of foods.

Highest Amounts of Flavor Additives
Baked goods and baking mixes
Beverages, alcoholic and nonalcoholic	Hard candy and cough drops
Chewing gum	Herbs, spices, seasonings, blends, extracts and flavorings
Condiments and relishes	Meat products (such as sausage)
Confections and frostings	Reconstituted vegetable proteins
Frozen dairy desserts and mixes	Snack foods Soft candy
Fruit and water ices	Soup and soup mixes
Gelatins, puddings and fillings	Sweet sauces, toppings and syrups
Gravies and sauces
Lesser Amounts of Flavor Additives
Breakfast cereals	Nuts and nut products (such as some peanut butter)
Coffee drinks and exotic teas
Fats and oils	Poultry products (such as chicken croquettes)
Fish products (such as nondairy creamer)	Processed fruit and fruit juices
Imitation diary products (such as nondairy creamer)	Processed vegetables and vegetable juices
Milk products (such as ice cream)
No Flavor Additives
Cheeses	Fresh poultry
Fresh eggs	Fresh vegetables and potatoes
Fresh fish	Grain products and pastas
Fresh fruits and fruit juices	Jams and jellies, homemade
Fresh meats	Milk, whole and skim

Source: The Role of Flavors, by Richard L. Hall and Earl J. Merwin, Food Technology.