Peanuts in the News
Some latest research on peanuts and peanut allergies is
quite interesting. Researchers studied
pregnant women who ate peanuts during their pregnancy and those that didn’t. Then they looked at their children to see if
the children had peanut allergies. They
found the more peanuts a pregnant woman ate during her pregnancy, the less
likely her child was to have a peanut or nut allergy.
The study in JAMA
Pediatrics followed 11,000 pregnant
women and children throughout the pregnancy, then from birth to
adolescence. Pregnant women who ate
peanuts and other nuts five or more times a month had children with the lowest
chance of having peanut or nut allergies.
However, these pregnant women also ate more fruits and vegetables than
other women in the study. Additionally,
they fed their children nuts before age 1.
So maybe it was the fruits and vegetables or the early introduction of
nuts that led to less nut allergies.
The authors of the study stated, “Our study supports the
hypotheses that early allergen exposure increases the likelihood of tolerance
and thereby lowers the risk of childhood food allergy.”
There has been an increase in reported peanut allergies
among children. In 1997 about .5 percent
of children were allergic to peanuts. By
2010, this increased three fold to 1.4 percent of children. According to an editorial by Ruchi Gupta of
Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, about 1 in 13 children
have a food allergy with about 40% of these have a severe or even
life-threatening allergy.
There has been confusing recommendations given to pregnant
women about peanuts and nuts. The American
Academy of Pediatrics in 2000 actually recommended pregnant women avoid eating
nuts while pregnant or breastfeeding.
Then children were to be kept away from nuts until age 3. This was reversed in 2008 when the Academy
said there was no reason to avoid nuts either in pregnancy or early childhood.
Dr. Gupta notes there are studies that show that women who
avoided nuts in pregnancy actually increased the child’s nut allergy risk. So much for the recommendations of the
experts to avoid nuts in pregnancy as they recommended for 8 years.
But others warn the study doesn’t prove eating nuts during
pregnancy can prevent a nut allergy.
More research needs to be done to verify the findings.
Sources: Eating
peanuts while pregnant cuts child's risk of allergy, Eating
nuts
during pregnancy may lower child's chance of peanut allergy, Image
source: http://www.newhealthguide.org/images/10435954/image001.jpg
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