Food allergies or food poisoning

Many of the symptoms caused by allergic reactions are also similar to food poisoning. This is especially true for stomach upset, diarrhea and unpleasant side effects along these lines (see allergy symptoms gluten for some specific examples).

With the possibility of having identical symptoms, how do you know if you really have allergies, or if you are dealing with food poisoning

First of all, allergy symptoms are not identical to the symptoms of food poisoning in most cases. There are often other effects that are not the same as food poisoning.

The main thing to watch out for are the patterns of when symptoms occur.

In most cases, food poisoning is a one-off thing. Someone has let the meat out of the refrigerator for too long. The food was contaminated during processing. One ingredients went bad and was added to the pot. There are many causes for food scraps, but usually are not consistent. In other words, don't expect that since you have leftover from food poisoning last week, you get sick every time you eat leftovers.

There may be exceptions. If a food has particular poor hygiene standards, or there is an error in the way food is handled, there may be a raft of cases of food poisoning.

But even this is unlikely to be confused with food allergies. First of all, many people will get sick from the same food, but only if on that source.

In addition, most first world countries are food control agencies who would like to discover and stop this kind of problems quite quickly. In the third world, food tends to come from a large number of small suppliers, so you would expect to experience food poisoning randomly (and most probably from bad waters more bad food).

Allergies, on the other hand, tend to cause symptoms consistent with an individual, but not those around them. Also same symptoms vary from person to person, even for the same food allergy.

This is true for allergies and intolerances.

If you are sick for years on end, I suspect that food allergies. If you are sick occasionally suspect food poisoning or some other cause.