Allergen-free vegetables a reality?

Vegetable products may become less allergenic if they are subjected to heat treatments or chemical peeling, and the food industry is increasingly adopting these new methods to produce a better vegetable. A group of European researchers has been working in this field to develop a range of hypoallergenic food products.

Allergens in foods are typically small proteins recognised by the IgE (immunoglobulin E) immune system and which cause strong biological reactions in some humans. Among the strongest and most common natural allergens are celery, hazelnut, carrots and Prunoideae fruits such as peaches, plums and apricots.

The research team, part of the FLAIR-FLOW 4 project supported by the European Commission and led by Prof. Claudio Ortolani of the Centro di Riferimento Regionale di Allergologia e Immunologia Clinica in Milan, found several allergens which were previously unknown and determined their chemical structures, discovering that they were often quite similar across vegetable products. They then used genetic methods to produce a number of recombinant allergens to develop improved diagnostic methods.

The scientists also heat-treated hazelnut and celery and used chemical peeling in peach and apricot. Heat-treated foods did not show complete allergenicity reduction: some minor compounds were found to be heat-resistant, triggering food allergy in some subjects. However, chemically-treated peaches and apricots provoked no adverse reactions in allergic subjects.

Food allergies have been in the headlines for several years due to their increasing incidence in the Western world (some 10 per cent of the population, or more than 40 million Europeans, are affected by food allergies), as well as the fear of introducing new allergens by genetic engineering of food crops.

Since the protein structure of these allergens is now known, it should be possible to create genetically modified vegetables where the genes expressing the allergenic proteins have been eliminated.

Whether consumers are yet ready to accept to GM vegetables, even if it means that they can eat food to which they had previously been allergic, is another question, however.