Browse by intolerance

FODMAPs are fermentable carbohydrates — oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols — that some people absorb poorly.

Lactose is the sugar of milk. Most adults gradually lose the lactase enzyme that splits it, and what is not split ferments in the colon — bloating, gas, loose stools.

Histamine intolerance is not an allergy.

Gluten is the protein complex in wheat, rye, barley and their crosses.

Fructose malabsorption means fructose is not fully absorbed in the small intestine; what is left reaches the colon and ferments, giving bloating, gas and loose stools.

Oligosaccharides are the O of FODMAP, and there are two families: fructans, in wheat, onion, garlic and artichoke, and galacto-oligosaccharides or GOS, in legumes — lentils, chickpeas, beans.

Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol — a polyol — used as a sweetener in sugar-free gum, sweets and diabetic products, and present naturally in stone fruit: apples, pears, peaches, plums, prunes.

Sucrose intolerance — congenital sucrase-isomaltase deficiency, CSID — is the inability to break down sucrose, table sugar, and in its full form the starches as well.

Tyramine is a biogenic amine that builds up as food ages, ferments or is stored badly.

Salicylates are natural plant compounds — aspirin's chemical cousin — that plants make to defend themselves. Only plants make them, so meat, fish and dairy carry none at all.

Nickel allergy is the most common contact allergy — jewellery, belts, coins.

Oxalate binds calcium, and where it binds it in the kidney it can form calcium-oxalate stones. It is a plant compound: it concentrates in leaves, roots, bran and seeds rather than in flesh grown to be eaten.