The Italian Society of Allergology, Asthma and Clinical Immunology (SIAAIC), is organizing the first courses to teach the food-service workers how to manage clients with allergies and food intolerance. Competent restaurants and pubs will get blue stickers. A security warranty for almost five million Italians suffering from allergies or food intolerance.
Participants will learn to recognize the clinical manifestations of food allergies and especially the most severe ones. They will also learn about the most appropriate ways to intervene in these cases.
Courses started in late April, at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Rome and will be available throughout Italy. They are coordinated by Domenico Schiavino, supervisor of the Allergology Service of the Polyclinic “A. Gemelli” in Rome.
An increase in food allergies and intolerance
Professor Giorgio Walter Canonica, president of SIAAIC and Supervisor of the Personalized Medicine Center: Asthma and Allergology at Humanitas, explains that the need to educate food-service workers arises. The patients are constantly growing in number. “Those who suffer from food allergies in Italy alone are more than two millions. This translates to 3% of the entire population and there are more than two million Italians that are intolerant to one or more foods.
Many food allergies are spreading out. It is estimated that almost five million people who are allergic or intolerant to nickel, also manifest systemic or gastrointestinal symptoms after eating foods containing metal. These, almost 100.000, people (and counting) cannot tolerate one or more food additives. People manifesting light or severe disorders after eating particular foods, are so many, that food-service workers started to feel the need to educate themselves about these problems, in order to help an ever-increasing number of customers. For this reason, we decided to organize specific training courses that started in Rome in late April and then, throughout Italy”.
