Study: Peanut Consumption In Infancy Helps Prevent Peanut Allergy

Mr D from 63 writes: According to a report from the Associated Press, "For years, parents of babies who seem likely to develop a peanut allergy have gone to extremes to keep them away from peanut-based foods. Now a major study suggests that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Here's the published paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. It's interesting how this peanut allergy fear is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The situation involves a complete misconception of risk by many parents, and probably it doesn't stop at peanuts. Is there a bigger underlying problem here?

Comments

Re:Dumb question

[Alrescha]

"Were nut allergies always so high and just not reported or is this a more recent development?"

In the 70s at summer camp the government sent us more surplus peanut products than we knew what to do with. The place was littered with open #10 cans* of peanuts. I've never eaten so many peanuts in my life.

No-one ever said the word "allergy".

A.

* that's not "hashtag 10", kids. It's "number 10", a size corresponding to about 110 ounces. It's probably an LD50 quantity of peanuts :-)