If it wasn't for modern medicine Mother Nature would have taken me out of the game long ago, and Darwin would be smiling.
At one of my visits to my ENT, I was handed a very helpful piece of paper that helped me understand the correlation to why my mouth itches every time I eat a banana.
Apparently if you are allergic to ragweed, you may be allergic to bananas also. This is called Oral Allergy Syndrome, or OAS for short. It describes a cross reaction that occurs in your immune system. So if you are allergic to ragweed that means your body has developed antibodies for ragweed. But then if you eat a banana, your antibodies thinks that bananas look like ragweed and reacts to them also. This is different than actually being allergic to bananas. Since it's the pollen reaction that is causing this cross reaction to eating raw fruits or vegetables. This should not occur if you eat them cooked. I can verify that since I can eat banana bread or banana chips to my heart's content. Another interesting tidbit that I discovered on my own was that I don't get that itchy OAS when I eat fresh organic bananas. I'm not sure if it's because it's organic, or maybe it's a different type of banana. However, the cross reaction is the main reason why I don't often include bananas in my raw food diet.
Anyhow I will share this handy little chart with you.
Here's how it works: If you are allergic to a pollen in one of the titles, then you may cross react to a food or plant listed below it.
Cross Reactors
BIRCH POLLENS
MUGWORT
| RAGWEED
LATEX
GRASS
| GRASS
WEEDS
|