Food allergens

Most Common Ones In Dog Food Allergy

Food allergens is important as they are the ones creating the unpleasant allergy symptoms in your dog.

The most common food allergens and the cause of more than 75% of the food allergies in Europe is:

• Beef
• Dairy products
• Wheat

Why is it so? Because these are very common ingredients in dog food. Dog food ingredients are not the same in all parts of the world.

As the main dog food ingredients varies so does the most likely proteins involved in dog food allergy.

Big protein molecules are more allergenic than small ones. In you (humans) doctors have some idea how an allergen should "look like" to make an allergic reaction. In dogs we don't know anything about this (sorry) - but we know that really small protein parts are not so dangerous.

The body can't see those small bits as allergy triggers. That's how hypoallergenic diets works.

Other diseases can increase food allergy risk. Stomach diseases or diseases in general that makes the digestion of the food difficult.

The body has a harder time to digest larger proteins into smaller bits and that will increase risk of proteins acting as allergens.

Food allergy allergens act by binding to the mast cells. The protein should cross link with two antibodies on the mast cell on the same time. This is why big proteins are more allergenic than smaller ones.

If big proteins passes the intestinal wall, enters the blood and gets connected to allergy cells (mast cells) they ruptures and releases the histamine from the inside of the cell - this creating allergy immunology reactions in the body.

Allergy cells - where are they placed in the body?

Exactly where you have all the food allergy symptoms