Allergenic Ingredients in Food

Abstract

Food allergy is a public health issue that has significantly increased worldwide in the past decade proving to affect the life quality of allergic consumers. For sensitized individuals, the only effective way to prevent allergic reactions is the strict avoidance of the offending food. For this reason, a number of regulatory bodies in several countries have recognized the importance of providing information about the presence of food allergens by enacting laws, regulations, or standards for food labeling of “priority allergens.” This has pushed toward the development of analytical methods for allergic consumers’ protection that should be, among others, highly specific, sensitive, and not influenced by the presence of the food matrix components. Several analytical approaches target either the allergen itself or a corresponding allergen marker such as peptide fragment or gene segment and have been used in the detection and quantification of allergens in food products. In this short review, the 14 allergens currently included in the EU 1169/2011 regulation for the mandatory labeling are illustrated as well as a selection of analytical methodologies for food allergen detection are resumed and briefly discussed.