What is a double-blind food challenge?
The double-blind food challenge developed at National Jewish Health has become the standard method for diagnosing food allergies. In double-blind testing, the patient swallows capsules at regular intervals, but neither the patient nor the attending physician knows what they contain. A third party keeps records of the capsules’ contents. Sometimes the capsules contain a food the patient is known to tolerate, sometimes they contain a food suspected of being an allergen, and sometimes they contain an inert substance (placebo) incapable of causing an allergic reaction. Such a test enables the patient and the physician to judge reactions objectively.
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