Am I allergic to bananas?

Can someone be allergic to bananas?

• I was over at a friend's, and her mum just made banana pie... she said "do you want some banana pie?" "sure!" "it has bananas in it..." *blank look* "in case your allergic!" "ooooohhhh!" we also did games where we had to feed a friend who had pantyhose on her head a banana, and before we did it there was a banana allergy warning. I never heard of banana allergies! is there really people allergic to bananas? how common is it?

• Answer:

  90% of food allergies are caused by milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat. The other 10% of food allergies can be caused by anything else, but since that's an awful lot of foods causing a very few number of allergic reactions, no individual food is really important enough to mention much. So yes, it is possible to be allergic to bananas, but not common at all. What is more common is that people who are allergic to latex can have allergic reactions to bananas and other foods (like avocado, chestnut, kiwifruit, passionfruit, plum, strawberry and tomato) because they contain similar proteins. Latex is, after all, itself derived from plant sap. It is estimated that about 1-6% of people have latex allergies, and about half of them will have allergic reactions to latex-like proteins in foods. I was at a camp once for disabled kids, and they did make a point of the banana/latex allergy thing. But I've never heard a specific warning about banana allergy otherwise. It probably only came up at the camp because people who spend more time undergoing medical treatments have a higher risk of latex allergy.