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

I refute

[Thagg]

My mom ate a lot of peanuts when I was a few months old, and I almost died of peanut allergy. I question this result.

55 years later, I'm still deathly allergic to them. It does add some adventure to life.

Re:I refute

[LWATCDR]

Let me explain this with science.
You have two groups.
One that is exposed to peanuts as infants.
One that is not.
Fewer children in the exposed group developed peanut allergies.
In other words SOME peanut allergies can be prevented by early exposure.

Your argument is the same as. "My uncle never smoked a day in his life and died of lung cancer. Smoking does not cause lung cancer".

Re:I refute

[itzly]

You can't refute averages by a single counter example.

Re:I refute

[PRMan]

Let me explain how your uncontrolled science is flawed:

One that is exposed to peanuts as infants and where the breastfeeding percentage is nearly 100% (I assume you are talking about Africa or somewhere here)

One that is not and where the breastfeeding percentage is only 77% (the USA for example)

Exposure?

[danomatika]

So responsibly exposing kids to risks early in life helps them deal with those same risks later on? Who would have thought ...

Re:Dumb question

[sycodon]

Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.

Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.

When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.

Re:I got a butt chewing for giving my daughter hon

[Anonymous Coward]

Honey is different as it can cause botulism poisoning in infants. It's not an allergen, but rather often harbors an actual amount of bacteria. In adults and children, the bacteria load is not harmful as the body can easily deal with it. In infants, the body reacts differently to botulism and it can occasionally kill them.

http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/botulism.html

That's why you were given the butt chewing. It's a very different situation to peanuts. Peanuts would be unsafe if they were covered in the same bacteria that honey harbors.

Re:yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger underlying problem is human society's failure to acknowledge that humans are biological. They are 100% animal in their essence, and are products of evolution. They compete with other life-forms and live in symbiosis with still-other life-forms, exactly like most still-other life-forms. The fact that they have fought their way to the top of the competitive ladder in no way affects the fact that the food chain is circular, and bacteria consume human and other corpses with equal ease --the notion that humans are special is rampant egotism. When human society lies to itself about that, trying to set humans apart from the rest of the biological world, there are biological consequences. Allergies, for example....

Re:Dumb question

[NotDrWho]

Because 30-40 years ago, every mother wasn't a panicky obsessive who was scared to give her kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because she read in some magazine that it would be abuse if she didn't treat her kid like a delicate snowflake.