Two brothers may be eating KFCs and cakes, but that's just half of the story. The rest tells of their daily struggle with multiple food allergies.
It's impossible to find a person who doesn't have an allergic reaction to something. Some react to pollens, dust, dander, and metals. Most are allergic to food. In the United States, around 15 million people have food allergies, according to Food Allergy Research and Education while up to 8% of children in the UK are allergic to one or multiple types of food, says Allergy UK.
Part of the latter statistics are two Merrett brothers from Colchester in Essex. As featured in the Daily Mail recently, Christopher and his younger brother Alexander suffers from allergies to a wide variety of food such as dairy, soya, grapes, tomatoes, and apples, as well as artificial sweeteners, sulphites, pollens, histamines, and pets. Fortunately their bodies don't react to anything that has corn flour, hams, sweet potatoes, and food from KFC and Nando's.
The children, age 5 and 18 months, are so sensitive to these allergens they quickly break into hives and suffer from difficulty in breathing even if they come into contact with only traces. Once, Christopher suffered a fit when he accidentally ate very small amounts of cheese added by carers to their lunch. The child also spent a good amount of time of his life going in and out of hospitals, especially when he suffered from anaphylactic shock four times in just half a year.
This is a very severe allergic reaction wherein the entire body reacts to the allergen. The windpipe can swell and close up making it very difficult for the patient to breathe. Blood pressure can also go down.
In Europe, it's predicted that by 2021, around half of the population will develop allergies, which will also become chronic. Thus, as early as now, and as cases of severe allergies become more common, new regulations aim to compel restaurants to inform their customers if their food has any or all of the 14 common allergens such as eggs and nuts. These laws, when passed, may also change the way people dine and how and what restaurants serve.