Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Study: Peanut Consumption In Infancy Helps Prevent Peanut Allergy

Posted by Soulskill on from the reasons-to-force-feed-your-child-peanuts dept.

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?

6 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. PlumpyNut by Major+Blud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in 2007, Anderson Cooper asked a pediatrician if PlumpyNut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut) was affecting people in developing countries suffering from malnutrition with peanut allergies. The Dr. said "We just don't see it. In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries." Sounds like this study backs up that claim.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-...

    --
    If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
    1. Re:PlumpyNut by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The finding backs up the hygiene hypothesis:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

  2. Re:Dumb question by Morpeth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Our pediatrician once told me, every kid should have eaten a pound of dirt by the time they're two. While she didn't mean it literally (at least not that much dirt), she's talked about the 'immune system needing exercise', and that helicopter parenting actually denies kids a certain amount of exposure that's healthy. To be clear she's NOT an anti-vaxxer, on the contrary, but thinks both natural and pharm assisted immunity/resistance is a good idea.

    --

    'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
  3. Bamba by EnsilZah · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's a popular snack in Israel called Bamba, which consists of puffed corn coated with peanut butter.
    Pretty much everyone eats it, and it's pretty common for parents to feed it to children as soon as they can handle solid food.

    So I was wondering how that affects the allergy rate for Israelis.
    And apparently a study shows that when comparing Israelis to UK Jews of a similar background, the Israelis had a tenth of the peanut allergy rate compared to the UK group.

  4. Re:I refute by Whorhay · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know if protiens from peanuts are passed through to the fetus or not. But our pediatrician did say that such protiens do make it into the breast milk. Which makes me wonder if there has been any correlation shown between allergies and breastfeeding, either positive or negative.

  5. Cutting rates 90% is significant by beanpoppa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There was a study done comparing Israeli Jews to European and North American Jews, with the premise being that parents in North America and Europe have been directed to withhold peanuts from babies/toddlers, while this practice is not in place in Israel. You have a genetically similar pool of Jews that migrated to the 3 different regions in the last 100 years. Jewish children in Israel have an allergic rate 10% that of Jewish children in Europe and NA. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...