Rebecca Seal is a food and health journalist and the author of Irritated: The Allergy Epidemic And What We Can Do About It, which comes out in April. Rebecca has been writing for broadsheet newspapers and magazines about food and health for two decades, and after her second child developed food allergies, she started trying to work out why so many more of us have allergies than ever before.
After more than two-and-a-half years of thinking, talking and writing about pretty much nothing but allergies, Rebecca hopes that Irritated not only helps people living with allergies to understand them better, but also helps people outside the allergy community understand why allergies should matter to everyone. Irritated explores everything from how climate change affects allergies to how deprivation can make the experience of them worse, how our genetics do or don’t make us more likely to develop them, how hormones interact with allergies and the ways allergies can impact our mental health. Rebecca also interviewed some of the many scientists doing cutting edge research on allergy treatments which will hopefully prove to be life-changing for people with allergies in the next few years. It also asks and answers the question everyone asks: is it really because we are all too clean?
A science and evidence-based book, Irritated contains conversations with more than 40 global experts in allergies, clinicians, campaigners, dietitians, psychologists and dermatologists, as well as more than 20 families and adults living with allergies themselves.
Rebecca’s writing has been published in the Guardian, Observer, Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Telegraph, and in magazines including Red, Grazia, Harper’s Bazaar, Living Etc and National Geographic. For five years she was a weekly food and drink presenter on Sunday Brunch, on Channel 4. She is the author of 14 cookbooks and two other non-fiction books, Solo, and Be Bad, Better.
Rebecca recently launched ‘Well. Done.’ a newsletter about navigating food, health and wellness, where, among things, she shares allergy-friendly recipes.