Sara is a ninety-year-old lady living in Nicotera, the Italian village in Calabria where the Mediterranean Diet was firstly identified by dr. Ancel Keys in the 50s. The music you hear in this video is a ‘chitarra vattiente’ a 12-chords beating guitar of Calabrian origin. Sara still uses old tools to make fileja, a sort
As a general rule, adverse food reactions that are not triggered by immunological mechanisms are referred to as food intolerances. In this case, the reaction is reproducible and the severity of the symptoms is dose-dependent, in contrast to allergies. Enzymatic food intolerance They are caused by the inability to metabolize some substances present in
The part of the food responsible for the adverse reaction is called the antigen or allergen. Foods contain a large number of molecules with antigen power (over 6,000) but fortunately, in most individuals only a few of them induce sensitization. Under normal conditions, our body has effective defence systems: the enzymatic and mucous secretions of
Food allergies and intolerances, better defined as adverse reactions to food, are on the rise in the Western world, as are allergies in general. European studies estimated a prevalence rate of around 7.5% in children and 2% in adults. Despite a constant increase in the prevalence of these disorders, there is still a lot of