Food Allergy for Beginners: Proteins
A Few Introductory Facts
- Living things, including you and the food you eat, are made up of proteins, fats, sugars (carbohydrates) and minerals.
- For the most part proteins – not sugars, fats, or minerals- cause food allergies.
- Proteins are like Lego creations. They are large, complex structures made up of a slew of small, simple units (amino acids) stuck together.
Single Amino Acid
Protein Structure containing hundreds of amino acids.
- A Millennium Falcon made out of red, green, yellow, blue, and white Lego pieces put together in a particular way “looks” like a Millennium Falcon.
- A pile of colorful, unconnected Lego pieces does not.
- Our immune system “sees” protein like we see a Lego-block Millennium Falcon, It does not recognize unconnected amino acids.
- To stay healthy your body needs amino acids from the food you eat. It does not need intact proteins.
- If your immune system decides that proteins looking like the Millennium Falcon are a threat, it may launch an attack with sophisticated weapons that go off when in contact with any Millennium falcon-looking food taking you down the dark path to… Allergy!