Food Intolerances: How to find your real food triggers.
6 sections, about 11 minutes in total
~65%
About 65 percent of adults worldwide have reduced lactase after infancy (NIH).
Not allergy
An intolerance is not an allergy. Intolerances work through a different body system, with different risks.
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IgG “sensitivity” panels have zero validated diagnostic uses (AAAAI).
Start with the signs
The signs of a food intolerance.
A food intolerance is a food that upsets your gut without involving the immune system. Symptoms arrive hours later and depend on how much you ate. It is different from an allergy, which is immediate and can be dangerous. Tap the signs you have to see why they happen.
Nothing you tap is stored. This is a mirror for you, not a form for us.
Three different things
An allergy is not an intolerance.
Tap each card to learn how to tell them apart. Treating an allergy as an intolerance is dangerous, and treating an intolerance as an allergy restricts your diet for no good reason.
Tap a tab to open it. The detail lands here.
One rule comes before everything else: reactions with swelling, hives or any breathing involvement need an allergist, immediately. Nothing on this page applies to them.
What the evidence says
What actually finds your trigger.
Here are five shortcuts people reach for. Decide what you think of each one before the verdict shows. The mail-order tests score worst.
Tap a promise from the label or the ad:
Pick a claim, make your call, then see what the trials actually found.
Verdicts summarize the cited research and will change if the research changes. This is coaching context, not a prescription. Anything with swelling, hives or breathing symptoms needs an allergist, immediately.
The problem with test kits
Why mail-order test kits don't work.
Here's why the mail-order panels can't tell you what to cut.
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validated diagnostic uses for IgG food-sensitivity panels
Allergy bodies including the AAAAI advise against IgG food panels, because IgG antibodies largely mark exposure to a food, and sometimes they even mark tolerance of it, so they do not identify intolerance. A panel of 96 foods you've eaten recently gives you 96 uncertain results, which creates anxiety and needless food restriction rather than answers. The validated route is cheaper: a good history, targeted tests, and a structured elimination done properly.
The step-by-step method
Map it, test it, then reintroduce it.
Click through all four stages. The third is the step most people skip.
Tap a step to open it. Each one carries the detail.
Why finding your dose works better than a ban
Most true intolerances are threshold problems, and lactose is the classic example. A splash of milk in coffee may digest fine while a bowl of ice cream does not. A total ban removes more than your biology requires, and it costs you foods, nutrients and meals out that you never needed to give up.
Now the part you control
Keep your experiment honest.
This is one of the few topics where careful self-testing genuinely works, as long as the method stays disciplined. Toggle what you'd commit to.
Your total score
8/ 43
Start with the diary. It usually clears more foods than it confirms, which is exactly what you want.
The score is for illustration, not a clinical measure. Do not self-test anything that has ever caused swelling, hives or breathing symptoms. That belongs with an allergist. And children's food trials belong with a pediatrician and RD, not a website.