Almost 8 percent of children under three years old and four percent of adults suffer food allergies, which trigger not only discomfiting symptoms like dermatitis and diarrhea but can cause deadly anaphylactic shock. Allergic responses emerge when food components, like egg, shellfish, or peanut proteins, stimulate white blood cells called mast cells to dump excessive quantities of histamine or cytokines into the blood, fomenting inflammation in skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal tract, among other tissues.