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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

#161

Post by magicalist »

ssivark wrote: post #63
bryanlarsen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This advice was never based on science. No, it was based on common sense. If X causes problems, not doing X is generally a good idea. It turns out that in this particular scenario, common sense was wrong. But allergies weren't understood by science, so all we had to go on was common sense.

What’s “common sense” is drastically different depending on whether you assume a complex system is static or adaptive.

You can expose a six month old to honey as well but their complex and adaptive digestion system still isn't going to kill the botulism spores that might be in it.

"I don't know how this bad thing works, better rub it on my gums" is not a good strategy in general.

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

#162

Post by nradov »

screye wrote: post #152

Does this effectively confirm the hygiene hypothesis ? The hygiene hypothesis suggests that a newborn baby's immune system must be educated so it will function properly during infancy and the rest of life. I'm weighing the need for my (possible future) children to spend time in a 3rd world country with germs & allergens for a little bit, to avoid heavily sanitized environments throughout their early lives. That's aga…

You can say least let your children play in the dirt and expose them to a variety of animals without traveling to another country.

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

#163

Post by nobodyandproud »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #50
nerpderp82 wrote: post #2

> 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…

> This advice was never based on science. No, it was based on common sense. If X causes problems, not doing X is generally a good idea. It turns out that in this particular scenario, common sense was wrong. But allergies weren't understood by science, so all we had to go on was common sense.

No, it was based on what we now phrase as “an abundance of caution.”

One of these days I will draw a one panel image that demonstrates the fallacy of this thinking.

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

#164

Post by dboreham »

dap wrote: post #110

I still can’t get over that the official guidelines for years were the opposite of this, and it seems to have led to a tremendous increase in severe peanut allergy. I get that public health organizations have to make recommendations in the face of uncertainty. But to get it so wrong, with severe consequences — was there a postmortem or investigation of how that happened? How are people to trust public health guidelin…

My understanding of this is that the original problem was children choking on whole peanuts. Hence the advice not to eat peanuts. This somehow got lost in translation and became "don't eat any peanut-based food".

Disclosure: son has severe peanut allergy.

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

#165

Post by kqr »

The annoying thing is When one of the parents is very allergic to peanuts, so you have to give it to the child elsewhere, and no friends or relatives want that responsibility. You get very little support from elsewhere.

(My wife is allergic to sesame. We have tried to get people to have hummus parties with our children but to this day they have not eaten any sesame as far as we are aware.)

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

#166

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

room505 wrote: 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?

It's probably necessary to look up more specific info on one's local stuff to be sure that it's safe for babies and is actually made with peanuts, but peanut-based sauces and dressings are fairly widespread. Any place with major influence from south Asia or southeast Asia likely has some form of peanut chutney or satay sauce, for example.

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

#167

Post by pkaye »

perakojotgenije wrote: post #102
chadash wrote: 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…

If you can't find Bamba but you have European or Balkan shop nearby you can try buying Smoki [1], it's the same thing. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=smoki&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiE...

TJs carries Bamba.

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

#168

Post by cortesoft »

nr2x wrote: post #141

Yes! Give your kids bamba! Israeli friends told me about how they basically have no peanut allergies and the science backs it. Made sure my kid ate it, and so far so good. I think it’s a gross snack but he loves it.

My kids still eat them at 4 and 7.

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

#169

Post by morpheuskafka »

screye wrote: post #152

Does this effectively confirm the hygiene hypothesis ? The hygiene hypothesis suggests that a newborn baby's immune system must be educated so it will function properly during infancy and the rest of life. I'm weighing the need for my (possible future) children to spend time in a 3rd world country with germs & allergens for a little bit, to avoid heavily sanitized environments throughout their early lives. That's aga…

That's not quite the same thing, this is specifically about the allergen itself needing to be introduced vs. avoided. The "hygiene hypothesis" as you said is more a general idea that the immune system should be exposed to a wide variety of foreign or pathogenic material in early age.

The avoidance of allergens was a deliberate thing under prior advice, and/or them being less common in the diet to begin with, it's not really a matter of hygiene or cleanliness.

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

#170

Post by hguant »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #140
azinman2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you zoom out, people used to use leaches for disease. Humans generally go through waves of health care trends. Generally speaking the progress gets better over time.

Leeches are still used in some medical situations, usually various types of tissue grafting.

Or in any situation where there's necrotic tissue! They're incredibly selective about only eating dead tissue.
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