Feeding Peanuts to Young Babies Can Reduce Their Risk of Allergy Later in Life, Study Says

Each time an invading pathogen or dangerous virus tries to enter the body, the immune system’s antibodies are switched to high alert. The T-cells start to attack. Sometimes, however, this attack-and-defense mechanism leaves the system in trenches, as the immune soldiers start mistaking certain food proteins as harmful invaders, and start attacking them, triggering a chain of allergic chemical reactions. The more this reactionary chain repeats, the stronger it becomes. To prevent the gut from becoming totally resistant to a particular protein, doctors suggest feeding them these proteins at an early age, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Just as gym-goers use strength training to train their body’s muscles, this early introduction of food proteins enables the gut to build tolerance towards them. In this study, researchers tested how introducing peanuts at an early age reduces the risk of children developing peanut allergies when they grow into adults. This idea, they noted, has helped more than 60,000 people avoid becoming allergic to peanuts. In Israel, the first three words a person learns are “mother,” “father,” and “bamba,” a word for peanut puffs, Dr. Gideon Lack shared with CNN Health.

Similarly, the study urges parents to feed their young babies peanuts at an early age, so their gut becomes tolerant to peanut proteins early on in life. It’s not about adding a bulk of these proteins or feeding them repetitively, just little tastes of peanut butter, milk-based yogurt, soy-based yogurts, and tree butters are enough. Most parents, Lack said, do not feed nuts to their babies, thinking they could harm their bodies. But by not introducing them earlier, they are doing more harm than good. “By thinking we were protecting them, we were actually causing the problem,” Lack shared in his study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

In a conversation with CBS Evening News, Dr. Jon Lapook, Chief Medical Correspondent, echoed the same idea. “If you introduce [peanuts] earlier, you actually decrease the risk of allergy.” When you feed peanuts to babies, you teach the immune system in their bodies that this is not a foreign entity; this is a normal part of the environment. You don’t have to attack it.

This immune system training has increased the rates of peanut allergies among American kids, three years old and under, and declined 33% after the guidance was first issued in 2015, per CBS News. By 2017, peanut allergy cases slipped from being the most prevalent to the second-most prevalent behind eggs. “That’s a remarkable thing, right?” Dr. David Hill, allergist and researcher, shared with the news outlet.

“I can actually come to you today and say there are fewer kids with food allergies today than there would have been if we hadn't implemented this public health effort,” he explained. Sung Poblete, chief executive of the non-profit group Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), shared that this research reinforces “what we already know and underscores a meaningful opportunity to reduce the incidence and prevalence of peanut allergy nationwide.”