It is not uncommon for immune responses to dietary proteins to be viewed as having two possible outcomes: priming for allergic sensitization, or the development of tolerance resulting in immunologic unresponsiveness. On this basis, food allergy has been characterized as reflecting a breakdown in tolerance (Strobel 1997).
It is therefore inappropriate to regard oral tolerance as immunologic unresponsiveness; the more accurate descriptors would be hyporesponsiveness, or possibly partial responsiveness.