What is the difference between food intolerance and food allergy?

Food intolerance or food allergy what's the difference?

Pets with food allergy often develop skin complaints with itching or gastrointestinal complaints such as diarrhoea, vomiting or flatulence. Dogs and cats with food intolerance also suffer from these complaints to a greater or lesser extent. For the treatment of symptoms, it therefore often makes little difference which of these two conditions is the culprit, but there is a difference between an intolerance and an allergy.

Food intolerance what is it?

Food intolerance and food allergy are often used interchangeably, mainly because the physical symptoms in pets are similar. Yet they are different reactions in the body. In food intolerance, the immune system plays no role and there is usually a shortage of a certain enzyme or transport protein in the intestines. This means that the intestines cannot digest and absorb all the nutrients that come in. A well-known example is lactose intolerance in humans. These people do not produce enough lactase (enzyme needed to digest dairy), so dairy cannot be digested properly, which can result in abdominal pain, flatulence and diarrhoea. Apart from the abdominal pain and too thin stools, you often don't get physically ill or less so. With food intolerance, the severity of the symptoms is caused by the amount of food eaten. After all, if you produce a limited amount of enzyme to digest a protein, a small amount of protein will still work, but if the amount of protein eaten exceeds the amount of enzyme produced, complaints arise.

Food allergy; what is meant by that anyway?

In a food allergy, the dog's or cat's immune system reacts too violently to the presence of certain foods or particles of these foods. We call these food components allergens. Animals that are hypersensitive to the allergens present will then suffer in their intestines, stomach or skin. Skin complaints that the owner often notices is itching, which causes the skin to break down and inflammations will also develop.

What food components are often the cause of allergy?

In very many dogs and cats, proteins of animal origin often cause the symptoms, but wheat, maize or soy can also be seen as allergens. However, it is true that in almost all pets an allergic reaction can only occur after they have eaten it several times, or the proteins eaten are very similar to animal proteins eaten before. Usually, an allergic reaction cannot occur against something eaten or administered once, because the body must first learn to recognise the allergens in order to be allergic to them. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but then it is often hereditary. With food allergy, it is about the proteins and/or carbohydrates that have been eaten before. For dogs and cats, it does not matter whether the food is raw, canned, cold pressed or extruded.

-This is an automated translation-