Food Challenges

Food Challenges services offered in Sandy and West Jordan, UT

If you’re unsure if you have a food allergy or need to determine if a particular food is causing your troubling symptoms, a food challenge might be the next step. The team of allergy, asthma, and immunology specialists at Allergy Associates of Utah offers this test at both of their offices in West Jordan and Sandy, Utah, to help determine if a specific food is an allergen. Food challenges offer valuable insight that can guide your treatment plan and improve your quality of life. Call to schedule your food challenge or use the online booking option at your convenience.

What are food challenges?

Food challenges are supervised medical tests where you eat a small amount of a food you suspect you’re allergic to, watching to see if it triggers a reaction. The goal of a food challenge is to identify whether you’re allergic to specific foods and to determine the severity of your response. If you successfully eat the food without reacting, you can expand your diet to include it.

Who needs to do a food challenge?

A food challenge is helpful if you've had an allergic reaction to a food but are unsure how severe it is or if you’ve had skin or blood tests that didn’t return clear results.

Your doctor may also recommend a food challenge to learn if you’ve outgrown an allergy to a food you’ve been avoiding for fear of a reaction. For instance, you may have refrained from dairy for years, but you're not sure if you’d have an allergic reaction if you ingested some now. To determine if you can reintroduce dairy, you’ll need to do a food challenge.

How do I prepare for a food challenge?

First, you’ll need to schedule an appointment with your allergy, asthma, and immunology specialist at Allergy Associates of Utah. The specialist will guide you through the steps and tell you what to expect.

Typically, you’ll stop taking allergy medications a few days before the test because they can interfere with the results. However, if you have an allergic reaction during the challenge that needs intervention, your doctor may treat your symptoms with antihistamines or epinephrine to ensure you stay safe.

Before the appointment, your doctor provides a list of foods to avoid on the day of the challenge. You may also need to stop eating about four hours before your food challenge or abstain from eating altogether until the test is over.

Your doctor lets you know exactly which foods and how much to bring for your test. Since the team monitors your reactions after you ingest each food, it can take between four and six hours to complete the challenge, so plan to bring a book, magazine, phone, or tablet to help you pass the time.

To remove doubt about foods you may or may not be allergic to, schedule a food challenge with the experts at Allergy Associates of Utah. Call now or book online.