Peanut Bags May Prevent Peanut Allergies – Like Peanut Butter
Feeding your baby small amounts of peanuts can reduce the chances of developing a peanut allergy. The FDA recently announced that products containing peanuts could advertise this claim on their labels , and you’ll soon see it on a strange product called Hello Peanut.
Here is the FDA-approved fine print:
For most infants with severe eczema and / or egg allergy who are already eating solid foods, introducing foods containing ground peanuts between 4 and 10 months of age and continued consumption can reduce the risk of developing a peanut allergy by age 5. However, the FDA has determined that the evidence supporting this claim is limited to one study.
If your child has severe eczema and / or an egg allergy, check with a healthcare professional before giving food that contains ground peanuts.
The idea that peanuts are good for babies is not new, but it took a while to get this message across to parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics wrote a guide to early peanut introduction in 2015, and the National Institutes of Health released their guide earlier this year. Based on data from the LEAP study of 600 infants who were at high risk of peanut allergy , the new advice says children who already have eczema or egg allergy should start eating peanut-containing foods between ages 4 and 10. months. … Children who are not at risk of developing allergies can eat peanuts at any time.
(We are, of course, referring to foods that are chopped and mixed with peanuts. Whole peanuts pose a choking hazard, as do large peanut butter balls.)
So let’s talk about Hello Peanut . These are eight tiny bags of peanut powder sold in a box for $ 25. You mix Day 1 with your child’s meal and he receives a tiny dose of peanuts. Then there is a little more in the “Day 2” package. Lest you think you’re done with it after the first week, Hello Peanut also sells a maintenance kit ($ 20 for eight packets) so you can sprinkle peanut powder on your little peanut meal three times a week forever, or until you will not find that there are other foods in the world that contain peanuts, whichever comes first.
“I personally would not recommend this strategy for most babies,” says Steve Taylor of the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln Food Allergy and Resources Research Program at Lincoln, because most children are not at risk of developing peanut allergies and there is no evidence. what matters when and how they try their first peanuts. The FDA peanut guidelines and label states that we only know it helps children who are at risk for peanut allergies. And if your child is at risk, you should consult with their doctor before deciding when and how to introduce peanuts.
I also asked Dr. Taylor if there are any advantages to the Hello Peanut multi-packet protocol. He points out that the LEAP trial did not do it this way:
In fact, the babies in the peanut group in the clinical study were given a relatively inexpensive peanut-containing snack called Bamba . In my opinion, parents of high-risk babies do not need access to specialized peanut products, although they can certainly choose this route if they want to. But peanut butter or bamboo will probably work as well.
So if you find it easier to spend $ 25 on a box of peanut packets, you’re freaking out. But for most kids, pad thai samples from mom and dad’s plates will probably work.