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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Peanuts for your Peanut
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Peanuts for your Peanut
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2016-01-31 19:25:01
Description: Topic introduction and interview with Dr. Rouchouze Guest Blogger! Charlotte Rouchouze, blogger and culinary enthusiast from The Children's Table, a blog that explores classic childhood foods from all corners of the globe Hi! I am Charlotte. Today, DocSmo and I are teaming up to give you a special post about a topic that is very important for new parents and parents of small children. There is new research about the introduction of allergenic foods, in particular peanuts, to babies, and today we are going to go over what this means for you, and then finish up with a great recipe You may be aware that peanut and tree nut allergies have become much more common in recent years, and it’s not entirely understood why this is the case. Since 2000, AAP has been recommending to hold off on allergenic foods, particularly for kids who are considered "at risk." In the meantime, allergies have continued to rise astronomically. By 2008, we start to see signs that the thinking was changing, and one of the people who led to this change was a doctor in London, Gideon Lack, who compared rates of allergy among Jewish children in London and Israel. It turned out that the rates were much lower in Israel than London among the same population. Dr. Lack happened to know that there is a product that is extremely popular in Israel called Bamba, which is essentially a little puffed corn snack with peanut powder on it. Dr. Lack wondered if it was possible that Bamba was to thank for the lower rates of peanut allergy in Israel, but he was still skeptical. Bamba: So he constructed a 5 year study. After eliminating only the most peanut-sensitive babies for safety, he measured reaction to peanut protein at the beginning of the 5 years and then split the babies into two groups. Parents in the first group were told to feed them peanut snacks -- either Bamba or peanut butter -- three times a week. Parents in the second group were told to avoid peanut products for their babies. To his amazement, after 5 years, the kids who ate peanut snacks on a regular basis were far less likely to be allergic to them than the group that didn’t. This led to a new study that was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine (see reference below) that found that among children at high risk for getting peanut allergies, eating peanut snacks by 11 months of age and continuing to eat them at least three times a week until age 5 cut their chances of becoming allergic by more than 80% compared to kids who avoided peanuts. Overall, about 3% of kids who ate peanut butter or peanut snacks before their first birthday got an allergy, compared to about 17% of kids who didn’t eat them. So now I will ask Doc Smo to join us and shed some light on the impact of this study. Welcome, Doc Smo! Doc Smo: Thanks, Charlotte!  Good to be here! My question for you is as follows. Why is there still confusion in recommendations? It seems like there is still an emphasis on risk over the benefits of not worrying about risk. I found it interesting that many websites persist in emphasizing caution, even after quoting the results of this very study. Just as an example, there is an article discussing this study that I read that ended by saying, “Sicherer and other experts say parents shouldn’t be tempted to start feeding their babies foods that have peanuts in them, particularly if the child is at high risk of allergies or they have a parent with allergies." Say what? I think when parents read this, they may be tempted to avoid the perceived risk and still see holding off as the safest option. I’m assuming this has to do with liability and hesitation to advocate for anything that could carry any risk? Or do you really think that most parents need to treat introduction of allergenic foods to babies as some kind of high wire act? Do we need medical tests and a doctor’s supervision before giving them peanut products or even other allergenic foods for that matte...
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