The incident that happened on July 17 of last year when a 15-year-old girl died due to a severe reaction after she accidentally ate a cookie with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on it became an instant wake-up call to parents. Because of the "horrible mistake" that lead to Alexi Ryann Stafford's death, parents of children with peanut-butter allergies became more vigilant even to foods that don't have any information about the "silent killer" on it.
Aside from becoming more aware of the ingredients of the food that our children eat, there is another tip experts have recently come up with. As reported by the South China Morning Post, pediatricians now recommend parents to give their babies, especially before their first birthday, peanut-based foods to prevent them from having peanut allergies.
"The big news is to introduce peanuts early," said Dr. Frank Greer, co-author of the study. Though the goal is to introduce foods like peanuts to babies before 12 months, the experts behind the study advice parents to expose their little ones to these foods as early as four months or as soon as he or she is ready to take solid foods.
This might sound the opposite of what most parents have known before, which says they "shouldn't introduce any allergic foods to infants before 12 months, and some even said before two years". But Greer explained that by exposing the babies from foods, which they could be allergic to when they grew up, can do better than harm. Introducing these babies to these foods can help their body become more tolerant to the allergens, the expert explains.
Because of the advice given several years ago, the team is now expecting negative reactions from parents who were once taught not to give their babies any food that could have allergens in it. But the study's co-author further explained that what science had before was just based on expert's opinion and was not based on any scientific information, according to The Guardian.
Dr. Faith Myers, a pediatrician at the Paediatric Wellness Centre at the Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Illinois in the US, is one of the experts who support the scientific validity of the study. According to her, it is understandable how parents would feel negative towards the results of the new study at first, but one thing we must know of is that "six months old typically don't develop allergies to those foods." By letting babies eat small quantities of peanut products regularly at an early age, you are actually "desensitizing" the baby, which could help them not to develop allergies in the future.
