A Food intolerance is when you have a bad reaction to food or food additives. A food allergy is strong and there is an instant reaction to the food. With an allergy the body's immune system is directly involved.

Since not all reactions can be covered by the term food allergy, doctors use the term food intolerance to describe those unfavorable reactions that don't involve the immune response system. Allergy tests are used to detect allergens. Sometimes food intolerance is just the result of too much of the same thing over a long period.

There are many different kinds of non-immune responses to food items. One of the most evident cases is plain toxicity. You know that there are various contaminants present in our environment. Contaminants are things which get into your food at the time of growing or harvesting or processing or wrapping or while storing.

These are at times unsafe. In certain cases such contaminants may make your food toxic and any person who eats them will experience health hazards. Now there are another set of people who do not have the enzymes required to digest certain foods. Their problems are less obvious compared to the other risks.

Many people suffer from the syndrome commonly known as lactose intolerance. When one suffers from this issue, they cannot break down milk sugar, and suffer stomach distress at cheese, ice cream or any of hundreds of food items. Although fairly prevalent in the population, the majority do not suffer from this enzyme problem.

Another instance of food intolerance which is non-allergic in nature is the effect caused due to the presence of naturally seen chemicals present in food, or in additives which form a chemical reaction. The mentioned reactions are very like actual allergic reactions and there is a chance that they may get mistakenly tagged as food allergy.

There are various things which come under the food additives category. They include substances like preservatives, flavoring agents, coloring agents etc. Some familiar examples include tartrazine, MSG or monosodium glutamate, sulphur dioxide as well as benzoates. When chemical reactions are involved with respect to food or food additives, they are not actually allergic reactions since here the body's immune system is not involved.