I ate an avocado once and my body rejected it and it came straight out.
A year later, I ate a certain type of mango and got so sick that I couldn't eat for nearly two days due to a continuous nauseousness.
Then a few years later, I got a mysterious rash around my neck which kept getting worse; I couldn't figure out what was causing it until the doctor figured that it was the pepper that I was putting on my food that was causing the rash.
I thought all of these were allergies, but in reality only one was a true allergy. Can you guess which one?
I have declined eating certain foods because of my misconception and ignorance of what a real food allergy is, and I am not alone.
In a recent study commissioned by the US National Institutes of Health, it was found that most people who think they have allergies, don't.
The study found that 30 per cent of people believe they have food allergies when in reality only eight per cent of children and less than five per cent of adults actually have allergic reactions to foods.
"Unfortunately, there has been some practice of just blaming any problem on the food allergy, which leads to some over-diagnoses and sort of a societal trivialisation of food allergy," said University of California, Los Angeles allergist and immunologist Dr Marc Riedl, an author of the paper.
12,000 papers on food allergies published between 1988 and 2009 were reviewed by Riedl and fellow researchers as part of the investigation.
Despite reports of an increase in food allergies, the researchers said there was no evidence to back that claim because most food allergies were self diagnosed.
Riedl said talking to the patient and examining the history of food consumption and reactions are key conventional methods in determining whether a patient has a food allergy or not. Blood, skin prick tests and food challenge tests are also essential.
Riedl also said people need to understand that food allergy means a specific type of serious reaction to food and that "if people are finding reactions to foods or concerns for food allergy are interfering with their life, their diet, their social events, it is worth getting a proper evaluation with a specialist in allergy."
The paper was released in The Journal of the American Medical Association and is part of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases project.
PS - my allergy is to pepper. Avocado and mangoes, I just don't like the taste of.