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Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

bbc.com

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Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/058373 "Bamba Peanut Snacks contain just four, simple ingredients: corn grits, peanut paste, palm oil, and salt."

The palm oil is less than ideal but this isn't exactly health food to begin with.

>palm oil is less than ideal

Why do you say this? Just curious. Palm oil is one of the better plant oils, no?

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#122
post #16

This is not new news, but nonetheless important to replicate and keep studying. I think the first often-cited study about this was in 2008 [1]. There are several more, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015 [2]. Basically, the original study looked at Jewish kids in Israel versus the UK and saw that peanut allergies were about 10x lower in Israel, even though Jews of European background (Ashkena…

It’s a full-on trend in the US to feed these to your baby to prevent peanut allergies. My daughter probably ate her own weight in Bamba.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#123
Been a suspicion of many for quite a while that the rise of "don't give babies nuts or nut-based products, they might die!" advice and going from one nut allergy per school to one per class wasn't coincidental, but was caused by precisely that reduction in early exposure. Folk-wisdom nets a win, this time, I suppose.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#124

Why not develop an mrna shot for peanut butter?

The objective of the mRNA shot for covid-19 is to make the person produce a antibodies that trap the covid-19 when it appears later. I think that for an allergy you want less antibodies, but an mRNA shot gives you more antibodies.

Also, I'm not sure what part of the peanut butter is the more important for the allergy. If it is a protein, perhaps a mRNA shot can make it better/worse, because the mRNA shot make some of your cell produce a protein.

If the allergenic substance in peanut butter is not a protein, I think it would be more difficult to make a mRNA shot that is good/bad.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#125
I have a two year old with a moderate peanut allergy. I'm convinced that early introduction at 6 months and oral immunotherapy have saved him from a more severe allergy.

Interestingly, multiple allergists we've spoken to have alluded to a recent theory (not sure if supported by the literature) that a child is more likely to develop an allergy if the allergen is first introduced through the skin than through the gut, especially if the skin exposure involves inflammation like eczema. Their advice was to make sure new allergens get in the mouth and not all over the skin early on.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#126

Where does peanut allergy come from anyway? The first time I heard about it was on American TV sitcoms. Two decades later we have EPIPENs in our schools too, but in my childhood food allergies were never discussed at all. Not a single mention at all.

Yeah same here (Europe), never heard about anyone having (pea)nut allergy, but now my own kids have it (for the record wife also doesn't have it), and not just peanuts, other nuts as well (cashew, pistachio, walnuts). But from what I've seen in Prague kindergarten lists of allergic kids, it's still quite rare, like 1-2 kids max out of 20-24 kids class. Seems gluten allergy is more common than (pea)nuts.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#127

> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat. If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it. > There had been long-standing advice to avoid foods that can trigger allergies during early childhood. At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old. This advice was never based…

On the other hand, I wonder if infants without a mature immune system might do better not being exposed to a lifetime of pathogens in found adult saliva.

I think the normal way babies ramp their immune system is breastfeeding - their body struggles with soemthing, it is transferred to mom's nipple when breastfeeding, the mother forms an immune response, it is incorporated into the breast milk, the baby retrieves it next breast feeding.

I mean too early. Not sure when too early is.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#128

Been a suspicion of many for quite a while that the rise of "don't give babies nuts or nut-based products, they might die!" advice and going from one nut allergy per school to one per class wasn't coincidental, but was caused by precisely that reduction in early exposure. Folk-wisdom nets a win, this time, I suppose.

In addition to other societal trends about helicopter parenting, I could see parents extrapolating danger from honey to other substances out of fear, out of lack of information.

(In case anyone's curious. Honey contains spores of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for botulism/botulinum toxin aka the world's deadliest molecule. People over the age of 1 can ingest honey safely. Infants need time to build up their immune systems.)

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#129
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US 25% of mothers are back at work within 2 weeks of childbirth ( https://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188343/maternity-leave-united... ). FMLA requires jobs to let mothers take time but does not require they be paid, and most folks are living paycheck to paycheck and need the money.

It's 25% of the all mothers or 25% of the mothers that were working before the birth?

It's a Department of Labor study, so presumably done on people already in the labor force. Doesn't change how terrible the stat is, even assuming 50% of mothers aren't in the labor pool that'd still be 12% of mothers back in work in under two weeks.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#130
post #74

I've heard that peanut butter is mainly an American thing. What would be an alternative to peanut butter in other cultures to cut peanut allergies?

I mean you can crush peanuts to powder and use however you want, just make sure to start with microscopic amounts and have strong anti-histamine at hand in case your kid is unlucky one like mine.
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