Yeast Food Allergy

Food allergies are often hard to track down and yeast allergy is particularly tricky. For many years I had experienced allergy symptoms – fatigue being the most pronounced after eating bread. I tried different types of bread with small alterations of symptoms and then I began to wonder what it was about the bread I was reacting to.

Did I have a bread allergy or a wheat allergy or a gluten allergy or even a yeast allergy? Of course I could have found an Allergy specialist and got an allergy Test but I didn’t! Partially because I did not have much faith in the testing methods being used and partially because they are pretty expensive.

What Food Allergy Do You Have?

Well ask yourself these questions…

•    Are your symptoms triggered when you eat wheat with no yeast such as soda bread or matzos?
•    Are your symptoms triggered when you eat yeast containing food such as Sauerkraut, Marmite or Vegemite?

In particular I noticed that I could Pasta and feel fine and be “wiped out” by a small portion of bread. And even Pizza, which does have yeast, I could eat a thin based Italian pizza happily but be wiped out by a thick based American Pizza. You may find it helpful to keep a “Food Diary” to track down what you eat and when and when you felt bad or just overly tired- a common allergy symptom.

Yeast is often an overlooked problem in food allergies. I noticed that my diet hardly included anything with yeast and even then in small quantities that I could tolerate. A good example of this is Pitta bread. This does a small amount of yeast but I can tolerate it easily either because there is less yeast or the variety of yeast used causes less of a problem.

Foods With Yeast

•    Bread apart from Soda bread which uses sodium bicarbonate to make the bread rise, and matzos and chapattis, the traditional flat bread of India
•    Bovril
•    Beer, Wine and Cider
•    Buns, Cakes, Doughnuts
•    Sauerkraut, Vinegar, Pickles
•    Stock cubes unless labelled as yeast free

And there are many others with small amounts of yeast that you may tolerate for their high nutritional value such as

•    Dried fruit
•    Yoghurt, buttermilk, sour cream
•    Tofu
•    Soy Sauce

Fruit juice may be a good example of where you have to see for yourself. There are small amounts of yeast and if you find it leads to symptoms then drop it!

Avoid excluding more than a handful of foods from your diet without careful help from a Nutritionally aware Specialist.

Baker’s Yeast, Brewer’s Yeast and Yeast Infections

We’ve looked at the first 2 already. Baker’s yeast is what Baker’s use in bread and pastry and Brewer’s yeast is used to make Beer and is a rich source of minerals and other nutritional supplements.

But how about Candida, the Yeast Infection? Is that related to Yeast Allergy or Intolerance? There does seem to be a connection because Doctors working with patients who have food intolerances and allergies often find that they have Candida too. People with Food allergies and those with Candida need to follow a simple program of what I call Allergy Action involving cleaning up their diet – dropping junk food and junk drinks and replacing them with home cooked vegetable rich diet with adequate protein and a good program of Nutritional supplements – preferably worked out with professional help.

There is no need to suffer for years; you can take action at cleaning up your diet and home environment with little cost and possible huge benefit.