Sesame Seeds: Small but Potent

Peanuts get most of the attention in the food allergy world today, but another food is fast becoming a problem: sesame. If you or your child is allergic to tree nuts, such as walnuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, and many other familiar nuts that grow on trees, there’s a good chance he or she is allergic to sesame as well.

Robert Wood, MD, director of the division of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says, “Sesame allergies have probably increased more than any other type of food allergy over the past 10 to 20 years. They’re now clearly one of the six or seven most common food allergens in the U.S.”

Why is this so?  It seems that Americans have become more international in choosing the foods they like and they are finding them in fine restaurants and…at fast food places.

It isn’t surprising that we are eating more foods that contain sesame seeds: falafel, tahini, hummus, and halvah, for example.  On top of that, most of Mexico’s sesame goes to fast food places for their sesame buns, according to Ama Alexis, MD, a New York allergy and asthma researcher. Sesame is also widely used in cosmetics like lipsticks and moisturizing creams.

Because sesame allergens are similar in structure to peanut allergens, people with sesame allergy are at risk for having allergic reactions as a result of eating peanuts, and vice versa.  Symptoms of an allergic reaction may vary from a mild, itchy rash to severe, potentially fatal, anaphylaxis.

To find out what other foods people with sesame seed allergy should avoid, and a list of foods that may contain sesame seeds...

Click here for more.

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