Find Your Trouble Foods

Think you’ve got a food intolerance? Here’s what you can do to find out for sure.

- Amy Greenburg

After years of itchy ears and eyes, and feeling lethargic, I decided it was high time to get to the bottom of the root cause. So, I turned to ImuPro, a company that combines a blood test for IgG food allergies (delayed allergies that can create an inflammatory response up to three days after consuming the trigger food) with post-test nutritional guidance.

Here’s how it works

There’s a range of different ImuPro test options available, from a simple screen test that checks 44 of the most common foods (dairy, cereal and chicken eggs, for instance) to the most comprehensive test, which screens 269 foods and additives (everything from meat, vegetables and fruits to spices, tea, wine and preservatives). The more you test, of course, the more trigger foods you can uncover. There’s even a special test dedicated to vegetarian diets.

Regardless of the package you choose, the process begins with a qualified phlebotomist coming to you at home or at work to take a sample of blood. (The appointment takes no more than 10 minutes.) The sample is then sent off to ImuPro’s laboratory for analysis. Antibodies in your blood are measured against different foods, which are then categorised as “not elevated”, “elevated” or “highly elevated”, the latter meaning a high intolerance.