“The blood thinks there’s a virus or bacteria and starts attacking - that’s a food intolerance,” he said. He explained that food intolerance occurs when undigested proteins enter the blood and trigger a reaction. When asked about the science behind the Pinnertest, the company referred BuzzFeed News to Ferit Erdem, a consultant who has an industrial engineering PhD from Istanbul Technical University. I’m human and I do on occasion, but then I suffer heartburn or an acne breakout.” “You want to be able to have these things. “You want to have a pina colada in the Caribbean, and I had a pina colada, which was not good for my face,” she said. She said she’s had much less acne and indigestion since cutting out these foods, although it’s sometimes hard. It found that she was intolerant to tomatoes, peaches, pineapples, onions, and turkey. “We know, from our research, that the majority of patients who alter their diet in accordance with their test results show a significant improvement in their symptom(s) within three weeks,” the Pinnertest report tells customers.Ĭosta, the company’s rep, provided her own test results to BuzzFeed News as a typical example. When the company finds a customer is intolerant to certain kinds of food, it recommends that “you should try to eliminate them completely from your diet.” It also claims to be able to tell whether an intolerance is temporary or permanent, and only report the latter. The company says it looks for heightened levels of certain molecules made by the immune system, called antibodies, to help protect the body from foreign substances. Within 7 to 10 days, they receive an email report with a list of the foods - up to 200, from grains to seafood to legumes - to which they’re supposedly intolerant. With equipment in the mail-home kit, customers prick their fingers and send back a few blood drops. It is a subsidiary and product of Arrayit, a Silicon Valley life-sciences equipment company, and is not covered by insurance. “There's nothing concluded so far.”Īfter being sold in Europe and then Asia for more than three decades, the Pinnertest became available in the US three years ago, according to Costa. He's very familiar with all of the important clinical trials on gluten sensitivity, he added, and none of them have come close to producing such a test. “I don’t know on which basis these people make the claim that they have something to identify people with gluten intolerance,” Alessio Fasano, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Harvard Medical School, told BuzzFeed News. Even some scientists whose studies are listed on the company’s website said their research is unrelated to food intolerance and cited out of context. Allergist associations around the world say the kinds of biomarkers analyzed by the test do not have any proven link to illness. Not only that, but there’s no evidence that those biomarkers cause gut problems or any other symptoms - a claim that Pinnertest promotes through celebrity endorsements and its own marketing materials. But that’s not backed up by rigorous research, experts say. The test screens for certain proteins in the blood that are supposedly telltale signs of food intolerances. Scientists, however, say that many of the company’s claims are highly unlikely or make no sense. The California company’s two Instagram accounts have a combined 106,000 followers, and it has sold close to 1 million tests, according to Patricia Costa, its director of marketing and social strategy.
The test claims to tell if you have intolerances to 200 food items, and advises customers to remove the offending ingredients from their diets. Pinnertest relies on social media to aggressively market this $490 blood test, claiming that it can pinpoint “food intolerances.” Unlike a food allergy, which is an immune system reaction, a food intolerance consists of uncomfortable digestive reactions to foods that your body can’t break down. #ad.”Īnother endorsement came last year from actress Lindsay Lohan, who has 6.1 million followers on the social network and wrote (in a since-deleted post) that “even ‘healthy’ vegetables can cause weight gain and diseases which is something to be conscious of.” Real Housewives of New York City star Ramona Singer endorsed the Pinnertest to her 372,000 followers: “I’ve been having some issues with my energy levels lately and I couldn’t figure out why.”
Maybe you have a food intolerance,” the television host and former Saved By The Bell actor told his more than 937,000 followers. “If you feel tired, maybe a little depressed been gaining some weight. On March 15, Mario Lopez Instagrammed himself with a colorful box called the Pinnertest.
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