This Secret Ingredient May Prevent Future Food Allergies in Babies

As someone whose passion and career revolves around food, one of my biggest fears when I got pregnant was that my kid would develop a food allergy. No, it’s definitely not the worst that can happen, but it wasn’t altogether unlikely either, given that food allergies have been on the rise for a while now, and no one really knows why. The idea of having to banish eggs from the house or pack nut-free lunches kept me up at night.

But according to the latest guidelines issues by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), avoiding trigger foods may not be the solution at all. In fact, experts now say that introducing peanut products into the diet early—as early as 4 months for high-risk groups—may be our best defense against future allergies.

This flies in the face of previous beliefs and policies and represents a “major shift” in how we think about allergen exposure, says Michael Pistiner, MD, director of food allergy advocacy, education and prevention at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. The last official position on the matter, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, was that parents delay introducing the most common allergens (peanuts are up there) until kids are between three and five years old.      

The NIAID’s stance is based on the results of strong, large-scale study known as LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy). When infants who were deemed to be at high risk of developing a peanut allergy had peanut products added to their diets between the ages of 4 and 6 months, their risk of actually developing an allergy to the nuts fell by as much as 80 percent. These results may indicate that the immune system in the human gut plays a role in helping us orally tolerate foods, says Pistiner. “That young age is when the immune system is developing and seems ideal for learning tolerance.”