286 foods tested individually. That includes the 30 spices in your kitchen, the superfoods in your morning smoothie, the mushroom coffee, the meat glue in your restaurant steak, and the insect protein in your new protein powder. IgG reactivity doesn’t care about your food’s wellness credentials.
There are two types of immune-mediated food reactions that are commonly confused. IgE reactions are immediate-type classical allergies — the peanut that causes anaphylaxis, the shellfish that produces urticaria within minutes. These are well understood, clinically significant, and diagnosed through IgE allergy testing and skin prick tests.
IgG reactions are fundamentally different. They are delayed — occurring hours to days after food consumption — which makes them clinically invisible without testing. They are mediated by IgG antibodies, the same immunoglobulin class responsible for long-term immune memory. When elevated IgG to specific foods is detected, it indicates the immune system is mounting a sustained background response to those foods whenever they are consumed.
When intestinal permeability is compromised — as indicated by elevated zonulin on GI-MAP — partially digested food antigens cross the gut barrier into systemic circulation. The immune system encounters these antigens and produces IgG antibodies against them. Each subsequent exposure triggers an immune complex formation and low-grade inflammatory response that, accumulating over multiple meals and multiple reactive foods, creates a persistent background inflammatory load.
This is why the symptoms of IgG food reactivity are systemic and diffuse rather than acute and localised: fatigue, brain fog, bloating, joint pain, skin conditions, headaches, mood instability, and recurrent minor infections. They are not happening immediately after the meal — they are the cumulative consequence of daily immune activation that has become the client’s baseline.
Remove the reactive foods for a defined elimination period. The immune complex load falls. Inflammation reduces. Symptoms improve. This is the clinical test of a meaningful IgG result — not the antibody level alone.
IgG detected at low levels. Monitor — worth noting in context of symptom pattern but not a priority elimination target.
Moderate IgG elevation. Consider rotating out for 6–8 weeks. Reintroduce systematically and observe response.
Significant IgG response. Priority elimination for minimum 8–12 weeks. Gut barrier restoration alongside elimination essential.
IgG food sensitivity testing is not a diagnostic test for allergy. It is a clinical investigation tool that identifies foods driving immune activation. The result is only as useful as what is done with it — elimination without concurrent gut barrier restoration tends to produce temporary improvement followed by the development of new reactivities to foods that replace the eliminated ones.
The standard IgG food sensitivity panel used by most UK practitioners tests approximately 190 foods. The HealthBeings 286-marker panel tests 50% more. The clinical argument for breadth is straightforward: IgG reactivity does not limit itself to commonly tested foods. The immune system responds to what crosses the gut barrier — which is every food consumed regularly, regardless of its health credentials.
Where the standard 190-marker panel focuses on staple foods — the wheats, dairy proteins, common proteins, and primary fruits and vegetables — the HealthBeings 286-marker panel extends into the territory that wellness culture has enthusiastically expanded into without ever testing: superfoods, functional mushrooms, herbal supplements, insect proteins, food additives, and the full range of spices. This is where clinically significant reactions are most likely to be missed entirely by standard panels.
The 22 superfoods and novel ingredients on this panel are exactly the foods the wellness industry promotes most enthusiastically and tests least rigorously for individual reactivity. Spirulina, chlorella, maca root, ginkgo, ginseng, guarana, baobab, aronia, wakame, nori, dandelion root, chia seed, almond milk, aloe — these are in daily use in health-conscious households and almost entirely absent from standard IgG panels.
The logic is simple: IgG reactivity develops to foods consumed regularly, regardless of their health credentials. A superfood consumed daily is a repeated antigen exposure. If the gut barrier is compromised — and elevated zonulin on GI-MAP tells you when it is — that daily superfood is a daily immune trigger. Testing it isn’t cynicism about superfoods. It’s clinical thoroughness.
Three insect proteins are also included: house cricket, mealworm, and migratory locust. With EU novel food approvals granted for cricket flour and mealworm protein, insect protein is appearing in protein powders, flour blends, and processed foods with increasing frequency. Cross-reactivity with shellfish (both arthropods, sharing tropomyosin as a major allergen) means shellfish-sensitive clients may react to insect protein without knowing why their “clean” protein source is causing symptoms.
Standard IgG panels test 5–10 spices at most. This panel tests 30 — all five pepper colours as a single marker, plus coriander, cumin, fenugreek, cardamom, turmeric, ginger, lemongrass, mustard, cinnamon, clove, anise, caraway, and 16 more. Spice reactivity is arguably the most clinically under-diagnosed food sensitivity pattern in the UK.
The reasons: spices are consumed multiple times daily across every meal without being identified as a food category. They are considered health foods — turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon are staples of the anti-inflammatory dietary movement. Nobody suspects their daily golden latte or curry base of driving their joint pain, skin condition, or persistent bloating. Without testing, this connection remains invisible indefinitely.
Fenugreek and coriander reactivity is particularly worth noting — both are in most South Asian cooking and most curry powder blends. A client of South Asian heritage consuming these multiple times daily, testing as Class 3, has been consuming a high-level immune trigger with every meal without any framework to identify it.
Most IgG panels test “cow’s milk” as a single antigen. This is clinically imprecise because cow’s milk contains multiple distinct proteins with different properties, different heat stability, different distribution across dairy products, and therefore different dietary implications if reactive.
Casein (Bos d 8) is the primary protein in cheese and yoghurt. It is heat-stable and found in most dairy products including those where whey has been removed. Reactivity to casein means most conventional dairy needs to be eliminated, including hard cheeses and many dairy-free alternatives that use casein as a binding agent.
Beta-lactoglobulin (Bos d 5) is the major whey protein. It is denatured by heat, meaning fermented and aged dairy products (hard cheeses, kefir, yoghurt) may be better tolerated than fresh milk and whey protein supplements. A client reactive to beta-lactoglobulin but not casein can potentially retain aged cheese and tolerate A2 milk differently from standard pasteurised milk.
Alpha-lactalbumin (Bos d 4) is also a whey fraction but is present in breast milk — relevant for clients with infant feeding histories and potentially for mothers with reactive infants responding to maternal dairy intake.
This level of protein-fraction specificity produces genuinely different dietary guidance. Testing “dairy” as a single antigen and telling a client to “avoid dairy” is a blunt instrument when the actual pattern might be “avoid casein, tolerate goat and sheep dairy and aged cheeses.”
M-transglutaminase is an enzyme used in food manufacturing to bind pieces of meat, fish, and other proteins together into uniform portions. It is used in processed meat products, catering and restaurant portion cuts, imitation crab, restructured shrimp, and standardised protein products. It is not required to be labelled explicitly in most jurisdictions — it appears under “enzyme” or “processing aid” in ingredient lists if declared at all.
A client who reacts to M-transglutaminase on this panel and who regularly eats restaurant meat, processed meats, or standardised catering portions may be experiencing immune reactions they would never be able to identify from dietary observation alone. The reactive food isn’t chicken or beef — it’s the enzyme used to bind them into the portion shape. This is essentially untestable through elimination diets and entirely invisible without this specific panel.
IgG reactivity doesn’t read the health claims on the packaging. It responds to what crosses the gut barrier. The panel that assumes your spirulina is fine because it’s a superfood is not doing its clinical job. This one doesn’t make that assumption.
The HealthBeings 286-marker IgG panel is Test Four of the TDG Five-Test Programme. It is interpreted alongside rather than in isolation from the other four results — because IgG reactivity is a consequence of context as much as it is a finding in itself.
GI-MAP + IgG: Elevated zonulin on GI-MAP confirms the mechanism driving IgG reactivity — a compromised gut barrier allowing food antigens into systemic circulation. High beta-glucuronidase alongside IgG reactivity to gluten or dairy suggests oestrogen recirculation is also part of the picture. H. pylori reduces stomach acid, impairing protein digestion, increasing intact antigen load, and driving IgG reactivity upward.
DUTCH + IgG: Chronic cortisol excess suppresses secretory IgA (the gut’s first-line immune barrier), increasing gut permeability and the risk of IgG sensitisation. Elevated oestrogen metabolites alongside IgG dairy reactivity may reflect casein-driven beta-glucuronidase activity.
OAT + IgG: Arabinose and D-arabinitol (Candida markers) alongside IgG reactivity to sugars and yeasts (baker’s yeast, brewer’s yeast) creates a coherent picture of yeast-driven gut dysbiosis and immune reactivity. HPHPA (Clostridium marker) alongside multiple IgG reactivities suggests bacterial dysbiosis is driving barrier compromise.
Blood chemistry + IgG: Elevated hsCRP alongside multiple Class 2/3 IgG reactivities quantifies the systemic inflammatory load driven by daily food-immune activation. Ferritin often improves as IgG reactive foods are removed and inflammatory burden reduces.
The HealthBeings IgG panel is included in the TDG Five-Test Programme alongside DUTCH Plus, GI-MAP with Zonulin, Metabolomix+, and comprehensive blood chemistry. Ask the DH Concierge what IgG food sensitivity testing would reveal in the context of your symptoms.
Includes the full 286-marker HealthBeings panel, home collection kit, laboratory analysis, a written interpretation against your history and symptoms, and a structured reintroduction plan.
A test result on its own tells you very little. The interpretation is the point — which reactivities matter, which are incidental, what to remove, and in what order to bring things back.