Contamination paranoia occurs when individuals experience a reaction to an apparently safe food. It is encountered in individuals who are not educated on food chemical intolerance and have not clarified the causes of their food reactions. It is generally based on the false supposition that the individual reacts only to one or two foods. As a result individuals become paranoid of unknown "toxins" in foods (known as mysterious contaminant paranoia), or of the presence of trace amounts of an ingredient they know they react to, when they have a mysterious reaction to a food. This can result in false intolerance rules.

Examples of contamination paranoia:

• People who think they have an allergy to a common food like seafood, tomatoes, chocolate or cheese, particularly when people think they are suffering from multiple food allergies. Though they do exist, genuine allergies to foods are rare
  
• People on gluten-free casein-free diets who regard all reactions to foods when eating out as being caused by trace amounts of gluten or casein. In reality individuals who have intolerances to gluten and casein react with a dose-related response and are not sensitive to hidden gluten or hidden casein, but to other artificial additives or food chemicals present in restaurant food. One common variant of this is the "oats are always contaminated by wheat gluten" myth.
• People who know they react to MSG, who blame all reactions to meat on brining procedures or the cattle having been fed MSG in their feed, because they do not understand that ageing and vacuum packing create natural glutamates and amines.
• People who are on a low carbohydrate diet to manage hypoglycaemic symptoms who blame all food reactions including weight gain on the presence of small amounts of carbohydrates, rather than on the insulin release caused by salicylates, amines and glutamates.
• People on an SCD or GAPS diet who blame digestive reactions on complex carbohydrates feeding dysbiosis when food chemicals are the real cause of their intestinal distress.
  
• People on a candida diet who blame adverse reactions on the presence of small amounts of carbohydrates or yeast in foods. In fact these individuals are food chemical intolerant, as candida does not cause food reactions.
• Trans-fat paranoia. Though trans-fats have been implicated in the progression of chronic illnesses like heart disease, they in no way cause observable adverse reactions to foods.
• Phytic acid paranoia. Phytic acid is a relatively harmless antinutrient, however food soaked and fermented to remove phytic acid tends to contain amines and glutamates.

Once the individual follows a full food chemical elimination protocol like failsafe, the true cause of these mysterious reactions will be resolved successfully.