All you need to know about food diseases

Written by: Dr. Félix López Elorza

Published: 07/12/2016 | Updated: 20/03/2023

Edited by: Ester Izquierdo Romagosa

Since 1983, we define food disease as "the loss of health by moderate food consumption in good condition". This definition meets all requirements, since it means that the disease is not due to bad food, but by an intolerance or allergy by the patient.

Types of foodborne illness

The three major foodborne illness are:

Allergic reaction, knowledge of which is clearly defined for a long time and this includes clinical symptoms, diagnosis and mechanisms.
Lactose intolerance, which occurs by a deficiency of intestinal lactase.
Celiac disease, triggered by the presence of gluten.

The latter two conditions must be reconsidered in the future, as many patients diagnosed with lactose intolerance or gluten attending the consultations do not do well with free diets of these two products.

In food symptoms, the most common are not allergic symptoms histamines, which can be of two types:

Toxic histaminosis: occurs when a food has been poorly maintained, it has a high content of histamine and it can not be eliminated. Usually it affects a large percentage of diners and the most common symptoms are vomiting and diarrhea.
Nonallergic food histaminosis (HANA) is the most common disease and is caused by a release of histamine by eating some food in good condition.

Nonallergic food histaminosis

The HANA is usually due to defects in the digestive tract that do not allow proper digestion of one or several proteins, acting as histaminoliberadores them discretely (not as in allergic reactions). Thus, histamine is accumulated and, after a variable time, producing symptoms.

We began to see in our laboratory this pathology in early 1980, seeing that allergic patients could not release histamine and produce different symptoms allergic. Throughout the investigation, they have reached very common symptoms correlate with HANA.