Avoiding Peanuts to Avoid an Allergy Is a Bad Strategy for Most

I suspected back in the 70's, that the so-called allergies children were alleged to develop were figments of fearful parenting. Peanut and peanut products are in almost 80% of the stuff we eat or in the cooking products or , the cooked foods are cooked in vessels that are coated and "polluted" with peanuts.
You can't have your peanut allergy and eat your peanut oil frid foods, too.
I was right.
I scare myself, sometimes.

If there is a generation of female children who have developed food allergies due to their mothers/parents following the wrong guidelines, when those women become pregnant and still have their allergies, how do they avoid having their offspring suffer the same fate?

I have two sons. With one son, I ate all kinds of tree nuts and peanuts in my pregnancy, and introduced various foods early to him, including peanuts. With the other, I avoided all nuts during pregnancy and kept him away from highly allergenic foods until he was 3. Which one has a severe peanut allergy (along with a fistful of other allergies)? The one who was exposed to it early. The other son has absolutely no allergies. Sometimes genetics trumps environment, no matter where the research leads.

Now can we talk about babies sleeping on their backs? Also recommended by pediatricians. UGH

I still can't get over the fact that the National Peanut Board helped fund the LEAP study. I simply cannot trust the results because of that. What a conflict of interest.

A perfect example of what happens when common sense and centuries of accumulated wisdom is thrown out for the latest finding or miracle cure.

This is one of the reasons people remain skeptical of global warming despite mounting scientific evidence. Sometimes scientists are just wrong. Here they urged pregnant women and babies to avoid peanuts and the other foods for decades and now they say just the reverse. The same thing happened with avoiding fat, which after decades is being revised to reducing carbs. The same switcheroo happened with butter and margarine. So when the white coats talk about climate change, many people figure in a few years the same scientists will find the wind blowing in a different direction.

My diet is changing to so-called 'detox-diet' as I desire to be healthy without any medicines to take regularly. Fortunately as I don't have any allergic reactions to peanuts, peanuts and beets have become my regular foods for the detoxification of 'homocysteine', a toxic substance that our body makes.

Has anyone done a study on the use of antibiotics and the rise of allergies? My theory is that antibiotic use destroys the biome of the digestive system, leading to "leaky gut" syndrome, where any food item that passes through the gut lining is seen by the body as foreign, leading to allergies to common foods.

I think allergies are caused by keeping people isolated from things. I always seem to have allergies when I go to a place I've never been before, but never at home. I think this is because I ate lots of diverse food as a child, and my parents let me play in the mud.

I agree with this research. My daughter as a baby had severe skin eczema, so doctors and friends advised me to have her avoid nuts, shellfish, eggs, cow milk etc. Because her response to these foods were not any life threatening so I didn't totally eliminate them from her diet. She had them regularly and moderate amounts. And now as a teenager, she could enjoys shrimp and eggs with not much of any skin problems or allergies.

For a great read on the "Hygiene Hypothesis," now updated as the "Old Friends Hypothesis," check out Moises Velasquez-Manoff's "An Epidemic of Absence."

"Of course, many people used to die from infections that no longer threaten us because of advances, so no one should take this as a call for living in filth. "
Would you please reiterate that? The "New Filth Movement" seems to have forgotten all of history. Or the concept of moderation. Stinky people who never wash their hands are not healthier.

"All changes to an infant’s diet, especially in children with allergies, should be done in consultation with a health care professional."

A ridiculous and self-important statement for sure. Most all Moms get it right -- Docs, not so much. Maybe focus on not alarming parents unnecessarily?

On evidence, it seems like most infant diet changes should instead follow age-old patterns of steadily adding the foods eaten by most people in the country and culture where you live.

As someone who reads the research, I challenged my pediatrician when she told me I shouldn't feed my daughter nuts until after age one. I asked her whether she had read the most recent research, and she said she had, but that she wouldn't want to see a baby having anaphylaxis. Talk about trying to terrify a parent! I ate nuts throughout my pregnancy and as I breastfed too, and my daughter was given unsweetened peanut butter in her oatmeal circa 6 months. The problem is not just that parents internalized the advice, but that some medical professionals fail to heed the research and continue to give parents dated advice, mixed with a dose of fear.

My only problem with nuts is that they are very hard on my gastrointestinal system. So I eat diet potato chips instead.

I did not limit my diet through both pregnancies, and I frequently ate peanuts and tree nuts. My daughter has no allergies, but her younger brother is allergic to peanuts. He would break out in hives and be miserable if I'd breastfeed him after eating peanuts, but we did not make the connection until he actually tasted peanut butter and we watched his face and eye puff up. He was exposed in the womb and as an infant, but he is still allergic. Sometimes it just happens!

"All changes to an infant’s diet, especially in children with allergies, should be done in consultation with a health care professional."

Do you seriously think that all parents should consult a pediatrician each time they feed something new to their infant? Is that what we are being told? And after reading this? Thank goodness for grandmothers.

Actually, this is nothing new. Studies more than 40 years ago indicated that delayed exposure increased the risk of allergies, so it was startling when doctors and the AAP, instead followed the 'common sense' approach of limiting allergenic foods. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and our knowledge of nutrition, immunity and allergy has been woefully meagre for many decades.

Hope Aaron E. Carroll knows how much these columns and the work they do are appreciated.

The problem is that the entire US health care system is beholden to corporate interests. When our children were infants, our pediatrician advised us not to give them cows milk until they were one year old. I am sure the companies that sell formula are behind this push because formula is many times more expensive than milk and a major earner for those companies. It is unfortunate that professional bodies like American Medical Association and the Pediatricians Association fall for tainted industry research. Doctors and parents try to play safe although this advice belies all logic or common sense.

Just a quick note on the hygiene hypothesis - it's not that your mother used too much bleach and made you allergic. It has to do with the fact that our guts used to get assaulted by things like tape worms and other parasites. We had much more contact with fecal matter via water that wasn't the cleanest than we do today. Interestingly kids who grow up on farms have a much lower rate of food allergies and asthma than other modern kids.

This is another, "Oh sorry we were wrong." After pontificating about protecting children from allergies by avoiding the food, we now have doctors saying the opposite. It was more than logical that avoiding a food is going to cause a problem later. When I was young, there was nary a birthday party without peanut butter sandwiches and tree nuts in the ice cream. Nobody died. Those who did have peanut allergies didn't eat the sandwiches. Period. Peanuts were not banned from the room or the whole school as they are now. I am sure that many doctors will still not follow these new protocols because that is not what they learned in medical 20 years ago.
This is just another example of doctors being wrong while insisting their rules are the right ones. How long did the medical profession insist we avoid butter and use margarine, avoid eggs because of cholesterol, follow a much lower sodium diet than necessary. In the past women were exposed to mammography which emitted much more radiation than was claimed or were guilted into going more frequently than is safe. It is time for doctors to make sure the studies hold up before they issue their godlike edicts. It is a travesty that a so many children were harmed by following the doctors' orders.

To all those singing the refrain, "we didn't have all these food allergies when we were young". Yes, we that's because our environment hadn't yet become hopelessly polluted with a tremendous range of chemicals and toxins which cause increased allergic sensitivity.

I would know, because I have a kind of allergy cancer that is like a peanut sensitivity, and which causes continual anaphylaxis triggered by mild heat, cold, exercise, stress, scents, foods, and many other things. The medical advice is to avoid all triggers, and by doing so I made myself more and more sensitive for a long time. At some point I realized that dosed exposures reduced my sensitivity, and over many years I was gradually able to control all my sensitivities.

But I also have to carefully avoid many of the toxins and allergens which did not affect my parent's generation to the same extent. So just remember that it was in the 1950's that we decided it was OK for companies to use and dump whatever chemicals they wanted, with no medical testing and no disclosure.

My understanding is that peanut allergies are much more prevalent in the U.S. than in Asian countries. I wonder whether the research suggests any explanation for that difference? Peanuts are widely eaten and are commonly fed to children in many countries in Asia.

I had a brilliant old school pediatrician who has since retired but years ago when my children were infants he told me to feed them peanut butter early, by thinning it with yogurt to avoid choking, and it would help protect them from developing a dangerous peanut allergy. It worked and I cannot figure out why it took the rest of the medical establishment over 20 years to catch up.

It must be very hard for parents to know what to do these days. First they tell you one thing, then another.

I have been allergic to peanuts since early life (60 years ago). My peanut-butter loving mother tried to get me to eat it as an infant/toddler (she told me this) and I always refused to eat it. I was not a picky eater. I had asthma too. When I was around 4 she decided, enough of this, all kids love peanut butter. She gave me a tsp of peanut butter on a cracker and told me to eat it. I ate 3 bites and felt so sick....had an anaphylactic reaction. It's my most vivid childhood memory, lying in the bedroom and then in the doctor's office, feeling so terrible and so sick. I was taught to avoid peanuts. After being so sick I was very motivated to avoid them. There were no epi-pens then. It helped that I can smell peanuts on someone's breath from across the room and the smell makes me nauseous. I don't carry an epi-pen anymore but am very careful when I eat out (plain food, mostly) - I prefer to cook all my own food. It was part of my life from a young age and I was a responsible child so I've never known anything else. My mom ate lots of peanut butter, and I played outside all my childhood and had pets, but I still got allergies/asthma very early in life. We don't fully understand allergies yet! Just my story.

Allergies are weird. After my aunt's second pregnancy, she became unable to eat shellfish.

From all the conflicting recommendations and personal experiences, this seems to be one of those issues that simply boils down to genetics. I was super picky when I was 2 - peanut butter was pretty much the only solid food I ate, yet I'm totally fine today with only some mild lactose intolerance to speak of.

This paper does make me wonder what will happen to those babies whose mother avoid all types of food (dairy, gluten, grains, etc.) for questionable medical or non-medical reasons. I get the need for food avoidance say if you are affected by celiac sprue.

Growing up, shrimp cause a rash and angiodema for me. While I would not advise what my mother did without medical supervision, it worked for me. She fed me small amounts of shrimp here and there because she wanted my body to get used to it gradually. She thought avoiding specific or a lot of different types of food would not help me. So nowadays, I can eat small amounts of shrimp and foods that have been in contact with shrimp with no reaction.

Honestly, I am pretty tired of hearing all the "advice" from those aged about 60+ who can't seem to stop lecturing us about how we have brought this food allergy epidemic on ourselves and our children. I get it: everything was harder, and better, and kids were tougher, and parents less coddling, blah blah blah. The hard truth is that I did nothing different than any other pregnant mother when pregnant with my first son--ate what I wanted, but within a month after birth he showed signs (diagnosed by actual MDs and board certified allergists) of being allergic to many of the common foods I had eaten and continued to eat while I was pregnant. I was forced to cut out all but a few foods to continue to nurse him safely (this was the best chance, they told me, to limit his food allergies in the future) and interestingly some of his allergies did disappear. On his 3rd birthday, after testing negative for peanut allergy, I gave him his first bite of peanut butter and within minutes he was swollen up past recognition. He is literally deathly allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, milk, and eggs. But these were the foods I ate in considerable quantities during my pregnancy and early in my time nursing him. My second son has is only mildly allergic to peanuts and not at all to milk and eggs, though I avoided all of those things during pregnancy and nursing, on advice of my doctors. I didn't do this. This isn't my failing. Our environment did it somehow, we just don't know how yet.

Studies should concentrate on the effect of alcohol instead. Mixing alcohol and dairy result in intolerance to dairy in some individuals. Living examples of 2 individuals who were eating ice cream while drinking beer, now intolerant.
I highly suspect that all my food allergies that develop very late in my life were due to drinking sangria (red wine, brandy and fruits) with various food types.
Of course, science is too busy researching medication than looking at the root causes of the problems.

So I suppose it's now a familiar story here. When I was young, evidently I had an egg allergy and my mom, now 84, says that the conventional wisdom at the time, was to continue exposing me to them until I grew out of it. Indeed, I did grow out of it. And like most other folks of my generation, I am 60, we ate everything the grown ups ate starting at an early age...and though my mom was constantly badgering us to wash up after playing outside all day, we seldom did, so dirty hands were always in the mix as well. Frankly, I do not think I knew anyone in the neighborhood that had any allergies, let alone to food.

Given all this, I find it remarkable that a group of medical professionals at some point concluded that the best approach was diametrically opposed to what actually had been working for generations. We now have a significant population of children who literally risk their lives doing something as basic as eating. I hope the medical community takes stock, and reflects a bit before they put forth their next nutritional edict. If history is any guide, they are more likely to be wrong than right.

I'm 66. When I was younger we didn't hear about all these allergies to foods. We played in the dirt, as others have stated. We didn't use Purell or other sanitizers every five minutes. We put almost enything into our mouth. We (generally) ate whatever our mothers put in front of us. There are certain foods I dislike, but I'm not allergic to them. I agree with those that argue that we've made our environment more and more sterile and therefore don't build up immunities.

I hope that those who offer their 6-month-old babies peanuts do so in the form of peanut butter, as the nuts could constitute a choking hazard at that age.

Is it any wonder that some people refuse to vaccinate their kids despite sound research that says it causes no harm? The medical community and I suppose the media are responsible for a regular onslaught of contradictory recommendations. It's gotten so people don't trust what they hear anymore. I love the recommendation for pregnant women to avoid sushi and soft cheeses. Meanwhile people die from listeria in ice cream and cantaloupes and you don't hear anyone changing their recommendations on those. Parents, you are on your own.

My wife and I had children. They pretty much ate whatever food happened to be around. They drank tap water. They ate the occasional Happy Meal. They ate street food in iffy countries. Until the age of about 7 or 8, their hands were almost perpetually dirty. Nothing that they touched was intentionally disinfected, at least by us. They're now in their thirties and forties. They had no problems. They are very healthy.

The Universe, the corporations, the agribusiness industry are not intent upon killing your children.

Early exposure to "allergens" does reduce allergies, as has been seen over years - though perhaps not rigorously studied. Same is true for exposure to dirt/germs - fewer diseases with small exposures to them.

Oh my! When my now 40-something children were babies, we did what most mothers did when introducing table food following strained foods; we gave them what they could easily pick up with their stubby little hands and eat. This included small bites of peanut butter sandwiches, eggs in any form that could be eaten by hand, small bites of veggies and soft meats - mine adored sautéed chicken livers and so did I - very quick and easy to fix. We did not obsess about what our children ate. And yes, mine WERE breastfed as well.

I lived in a neighborhood with lots of big families and I can promise you, no one had the time to obsess over food - they fixed it, the children ate it. And no one was carrying Epi pens due to allergies.

Dirt? Oh yes! They played in the yard and in a sandbox and they put these things in their mouths and their dirty hands in their mouths as well. And guess what - they actually have immune systems!

Even though I was born in 1943, my mother was more like those today - she was 35 when she had me - positively elderly for that time. She was also a germ freak and clean fanatic. And guess what - I've suffered from allergies and immune problems my entire life. The dear woman meant well, but was badly misguided.

My daughter had a life-threatening reaction to a single taste of a peanut butter milkshake at the age of about 17 months. There is no history of food allergies on either side of the family. I had eaten tons of peanut butter (and anything else I desired and could afford, including shellfish) while both pregnant and nursing. I did avoid giving her peanut butter until that first taste, when within 15 minutes she began to swell until I wouldn't have recognized her and broke out in hives the size of quarters. Fortunately we were 10 minutes from an emergency room.

Because I had read the advice on what foods might trigger allergies, I knew what had happened—and of course felt guilty. I hadn't waited till 18 months as my book said! And then later I saw advice that said to wait until the child was 3 to introduce peanuts, so I was heartbroken that I had "caused" her allergy by jumping the gun.

She's 19 and still tests as markedly allergic. We have to shell out $400 every year for her to carry an EpiPen, which our oh-so-generous insurance pays nothing for and which has quadrupled in price in the last two or three years. (Why, oh why? It's been around forever.) She never has to use it because she's super-careful, but it expires annually and going without is to risk death.

Now you're telling me I should've fed her PBJ sandwiches as soon as she could gum them.

Can I sue the propagators of incorrect advice for malpractice?

Just kidding. Maybe.

As a pediatrician, I can't tell you how disgusted I am by medical advice, especially nutrition advice, based on factual suppositions, often presented by people with a very strong point of view. As a pediatrician, I can offer advice about how people have historically fed babies, but there is almost no real evidence to support one feeding protocol over another. There is evidence to avoid whole milk before the age of 1, but very little else is scientific. Best practices need more than just someones opinion to be so. If you follow recommendations, feeding children solids before the age of 6 months is akin to giving antibiotics for a virus. But there is no scientific data to support that, just someone who has a strong opinion , and access to those who make recommendations. Evidence based medicine should be just that! if there is no evidence do not consider it medicine. As for sun screen? don't get me started on that one either!

As we are about to have our first baby (my third, with the first two from a previous marriage), I have been coaching my wife *not* to believe so much of this Internet gossip that passes as the "last word in childhood nutrition and care". In today's world, unfortunately, the "MAN BITES DOG!!!!!!" headline get more attention than boring, but painfully undertaken and reviewed research. The former, which after first going viral then being transformed into some sort of "unassailable truth" is difficult to correct and actually harms the public immeasurably.

It's very good that the AAP was willing and able to review their recommendation and make changes based on the evidence. But, once again, we see a wide-ranging dietary recommendation made without having done studies to determine whether this recommendation would fix a real problem. It would be better to have the evidence first, then make recommendations.