Food Intolerances

Food Intolerances

When you have a food intolerance, it means your digestive system has a hard time digesting (breaking down) a food. Another word for food intolerance is food sensitivity.

Food intolerance means your gut is sensitive to certain foods and can’t tolerate them. When you eat these foods, you may experience uncomfortable symptoms like gas, diarrhea and abdominal pain.

Intolerances can result from metabolic properties of the food (e.g., a person’s inability to digest lactase in milk, resulting in diarrhea and lactose intolerance), pharmacologic (e.g., increased heart rate from caffeine, flushing from alcohol), Scombroid poisoning (food poisoning from ingesting improperly stored fish, which can release histamine and mimic an allergic reaction) or without a known mechanism (asthma and respiratory symptoms from sulfites).