One woman in Melbourne experienced the terrifying complications first-hand.
Nhanh Cutajar's two-year-old son August has multiple allergies, including dairy, egg, soy, peanuts, sesame and salmon.
The reaction to some of those foods is so severe, they can lead to his body shutting down with anaphylactic shock.
Last month he ended up in hospital, after a woman who spoke little English, gave him a biscuit containing dairy products at a playgroup.
Nhanh said the language barrier meant the woman didn't comprehend the seriousness of August's allergies.
"I clearly said, 'he's allergic', but because she didn't understand, it didn't register with her how important it was not to feed him," Nhanh told SBS.
Nhanh is now on a crusade to increase awareness of allergies in ethnic communities.
"If it was someone who was able to communicate with me and understand me it wouldn't have happened," she said.
Desperate to publicise the issue, Nhanh shared her experience online.
Her post struck a chord with Grace O'Neill from online support group, "Allergy Fun".
Grace O'Neill said while there is a good general awareness of allergies, more needs to be done for multilingual communities.
"Especially in some cultures, like the Asian and the Greek, food is such a central thing," Grace said.
"We really need to move now to a new focus, to encourage other languages to be aware as well."
Maria Said from Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia said many food allergy deaths involved children whose parents were from migrant backgrounds.
"I would say at least three quarters of the deaths that I'm aware of, are in people who are from a non-English speaking background," she said.
"They are immigrant families," she said.
"Many of them from Asia. "
Professor Katie Allen, from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, said Australia has some of the highest rates of food allergy in the world.
Professor Allen said ten per cent of infants born here now have allergies, compared to almost zero, fifty years ago.
And she confirmed children born to migrant parents from Asia are the most at risk.
She said this is despite the rates of food allergies in Asian countries being very low.
"We have found that children who are from Asian families, have the highest rates of food allergy, compared to Australian children," Professor Allen told SBS.
"Children who are born in Asia and then migrate to Australia have lower rates of food allergy, so seem to be protected."
Professor Allen said this factor could hold the key to discovering why allergy rates have increased so dramatically.
"We think its something to do with the modern lifestyle, something that happens early in life, and we're not hot on the heels of that," she said.
Maria Said is concerned that the message around allergy safety is not getting through to some groups.
"It's difficult for people to understand food allergy when a child has just been diagnosed, but we have even more difficulty in getting people from non-English speaking backgrounds to understand that food allergy is real," she said.
"It's certainly a huge issue when we have lots of grandparents wanting to give children the food so their body 'gets used to it', which is of course a real danger."
Allergy Fun's Grace O'Neill agreed it can be hard to get some people to understand the seriousness of the issue.
"I still come across Asian families who say, 'we never had it in our day. You should just keep giving it to them and they'll be ok,' she said.
August's image and the message "Share Toys, Not Food" has been translated into Chinese script and posted online, where it has been shared more than 17,000 times.
There's a clear need for more multilingual resources, said Maria Said, but funding them is difficult.
"Every time we try to get material translated, we're told it costs a lot of money," she said.
"We're a multicultural society, we are trying to do the best for everybody and optimal care is not just for Australian-speaking people, it's optimal care of all people living in Australia. "
Food Allergy week runs from the 15th to the 21st of May.
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