Tag: allergic

Infants who get a taste of eggs and peanuts starting when they’re as young as 4 months old may have a lower risk of developing allergies to those foods than babies who try them later, a research review suggests.

With eggs, giving babies that first spoonful between 4 and 6 months was associated with 46 percent lower odds of egg allergies than waiting to introduce this food later.

For peanuts, offering infants a sample between 4 and 11 months was associated with 71 percent lower odds of peanut allergies than waiting longer.

These findings suggest that for most babies, eggs and peanuts should be among their first foods, said senior study author Dr. Robert Boyle, a pediatric allergy researcher at Imperial College London. But that’s not what many doctors recommend, he said.

Nuts are a common allergen among children and they can cause one of the more severe, even life-threatening allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis. Only about 6 percent of all children have clinically diagnosed food allergies. This number is rather small, but food intolerance, which presents itself much like a food allergy, adds to the public perception that this is a major issue. While the medical difference is quite different, the solution to a food allergy and intolerance is to remove the culprit food from you or your child’s diet.