Your Food Sensitivity Test Flagged the Foods You Eat Every Day. That's the Tell.

I see it constantly. Someone comes in with a printout from a $300 panel, and the "avoid" column is basically their grocery list, eggs, wheat, almonds, the yogurt they have every morning. If that sounds familiar, take a breath. That list is telling you something, just not what you think it's telling you.

What these tests actually measure

Here's the issue: that test measured IgG antibodies, and IgG isn't a damage signal. It's your body's record of what you've been exposed to. A high number usually means one thing, you eat that food a lot. That's it. It's closer to a food diary than a diagnosis.

This is exactly why the results so often read like a list of breakfast staples. Eggs every morning, almonds in your afternoon snack, yogurt as a go-to, wheat in nearly everything. The panel isn't finding hidden enemies. It's noticing what's already on repeat in your kitchen.

Why it can't find a real allergy either

Now, a food you're truly allergic to can show up on these panels too. But that's exactly the problem: the test can't tell a real allergy apart from a food you tolerate just fine, and it can even come back negative on an allergy that's real. That's why it's not a safe way to find allergies. A true food allergy is an IgE reaction, and it needs proper allergy testing, not a sensitivity panel.

So the panel didn't find your problem. It handed you a fear-list built from your own fridge, and it can't be trusted to catch the one thing that actually matters. Cutting foods off that list can feel like progress. Really, you may just be shrinking your plate for no reason, and losing foods you had no reason to give up.

So what should you actually do with symptoms like this?

If certain foods genuinely bother you, that reaction is real and worth taking seriously, it's just not what an IgG panel is built to explain. Bloating, irregularity, and discomfort after eating usually trace back to something more specific: a FODMAP trigger, an overgrowth like SIBO, or a pattern in how and when you're eating. That takes a real investigation, not a mail-in panel and a list of foods to fear.

This is the work I do with my clients every day, sorting out what's actually causing symptoms from what's just correlation dressed up as a diagnosis. If you've been avoiding half your grocery list because of a panel like this, it might be worth a second look with someone who can test properly and get you back to eating without the fear.

Fix your gut, fix your life.