Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the number of United States children who suffered from food allergies had gone up in 2007, reaching approximately 3 million.

CDC officials performed the first federal study in the aforementioned matter, finding that last year, about 1 in 26 American kids had been affected by food allergies, which translates as an increase by 18 percent from 1997, when only 1 in 29 children had the condition.

Unfortunately, researchers have yet to find what has caused the rise, although they are certain that both a doubling in peanut allergies (revealed by previous studies) and a longer than ten years ago recovery time from milk and egg allergies need to be factored in.

The CDC looked at data that was collected in 2007 via a door-to-door survey in which 9,500 U.S. children under the age of 18 participated.

Even though the Centers’ officials did not state which the most common food allergies in kids were, other studies have shown that about 1 in 40 Americans was bound to have a milk allergy at some time in their lives, while 1 in 50 percent of them would develop an egg allergy.

Moreover, 1 in 50 Americans suffer from shellfish allergy and approximately 1 in 100 has such reactions to peanuts.

The CDC’s study also revealed that the number of children who needed to be admitted to a hospital as a result to their food allergies had gone up during the past decade, from 2,600 a year in the 1990s to an annual 9,500 within recent years.