Nuts...why are they so bad

I eat nuts in the canteen at work every day. Nobody has ever objected.

There were a lot of forbidden foods in the NHS booklet given to me in 2005. Alcohol and caffeine were not forbidden. The moderation levels suggested were quite bizarrely high. Nuts were on the forbidden list for babies/toddlers with some guidance on when to introduce. For pregnant women it said to avoid if there was a family history of nut allergies. There isn't and I love nuts. I think midwives might have been giving different advice elsewhere in the UK because MIL confiscated my Snickers when we were visiting. By the time DC started nursery and school all settings were nut free to the extent that we'd get general reminders by the primary school about specific things we might not have realised nuts were in.

SIL - despite no family history of nut allergies - didn't give her kids born around the same time as DC any nuts until they were about 5. It was somewhat earlier with DC.

In primary there were a fair few with allergies and intolerances. A lot of gluten, a fair few dairy and nut and 2 legume allergy kids.

Histamine is the other issue I can struggle with. I’ve noticed it’s much worse when my thyroid is out of wack.

I eat a lot of classic histamine foods though. The one that can really do me is meat. Has to be fresh.

when I was young I hated tomatoes as they sting my mouth. I seem to have grown out of it. But when my lactose / fodmap issues were really bad, I couldn’t really tolerate too many cooked tomatoes. Pizzas flew through me. Am fine now.

Same same with two. First child ate no peanuts and not allergic. Second child had milk, eggs, loads of peanuts and they're allergic to all three, ana to peanuts. Go figure.

Edited to say, no c sections 🤷🏼‍♀️

hmmm might be one of the additives!

or even, stress.

My gut seems a lot better on holiday!

I don’t tend to eat much bread these days so when I do eat brown bread it really affects me. White is fine but I don’t tend to get it. I eat a lot of porridge and oat cakes and hummus, brown rice etc.

Tim Spector did a series on Netflix with lots of people who couldn’t eat random things and basically they just had to eat a tiny amount every day.

But it’s really important to understand that’s intolerance, not allergy. I was lactose intolerant for a while. (Following a few years of antibiotics and awful iron tablets, lots of stress and no sleep.) I managed to get back on track with a small splash in my tea every morning and eating natural yogurt. (I just couldn’t cope without my morning tea but found in the end I could slowly build back up.)

However, everyone is very different.

My vaginal birth daughter has a nut allergy (& dog, dust, excema, asthma). My C-section son has no allergies.

I had 3 sections, first child I ate peanuts during pregnancy not allergic, second child I also ate peanuts, dairy and egg during pregnancy and while breast feeding, allergic to all, third child no peanuts and not allergic - go figure!!

Well it depends on the exact proteins a person is allergic to. Some peanut proteins are very similar to those found in tree nuts so a person is allergic to both, or if you are allergic to different peanut proteins you may be allergic to peanuts and other legumes such as lentils. Peant/tree nut allergies are very common though and as they all get processed on the same lines there's huge amounts of cross contamination between the two anyway.

I find the words “nut allergy” confusing because I’m never sure whether it refers to actual nuts or peanuts which are not nuts at all but legumes.

I was told to avoid nuts while breastfeeding, back in the early 2000s. I had to take a long haul flight at that time and the only snacks the airline provided were peanuts! I told them I couldn't eat peanuts and they said well, that's all there is.

I know someone in his 60s who is coeliac. He wasn't diagnosed for years - as a child he was just unwell and had to put up with it.

Off topic but I work with a young woman who has life threatening anaphylaxis to peanuts. she sometimes has to have her heart restarted in hospital when her epi pens don’t cut it.
she doesn’t fly often unless she can minimise risks and trust the airline to accommodate her but without fail she is always met with other passengers kicking off when they do the ‘no peanut’ announcement on flights. one even threatened to open a bag, despite the fact that his own flight would be grounded and his holiday ruined, that’s without the fact that he could literally kill her!

I didn't know kids with allergies growing up. But I did know kids with constantly streaming noses, terrible eczema and constant stomach ache. Which is exactly how my son reacts if he has anything with dairy or soy in it. Expect lots of those poor kids had allergies and just didn't know it.

My mother in law is 70… and allergic to nuts.

As did my sister (according to government advice when it changed) and her son has a severe allergy.

that’ll be FODMAP issues; as well age we start to loose the ability to digest certain things due to lower enzymes and changing gut microbiome

@Bitsostuff where would MNs be without smug posters?!

I didn't eat nuts during pregnancy and my baby was allergic to peanuts (diagnosed at 6 months). I did however eat plenty of dairy and celery and introduced those early and he was allergic to those too.
Likewise my mum didn't avoid anything in pregnancy and I was weaned at 3 months and I was allergic to so many things as a child - dairy, citrus, fish. We had animals at home and I was allergic to those too.

People should follow the current advice of course but there's no point being smug about it. It doesnt work for everybody.

It’s interesting that some dc develop an allergy later in life.

I don’t remember many people eating nuts when I was a dc in the 80s tbh but i know people allergic to cats/dogs.

DD is allergic to walnuts. Not so severe she’d die but she gets a rash around her mouth. It started randomly about 2 years ago when she was 12, no prior issues and she’s fine with all other nuts. It’s interesting because my Gran has the exact same issue with them and the mouth rash. She didn’t start with it until her 70s. She had to go see a private specialist because she couldn’t figure out what was causing it and the NHS were fobbing her off. She’d been eating walnuts before bed after reading it helped with sleep. I guess that one is genetic?

We also didn’t have anyone with severe allergies at school that I was aware of. Certainly didn’t have a nut policy as I think all schools do now. All I know is that level of allergy must be terrifying. I try not to eat nuts in public because I don’t want to be inadvertently responsible for someone’s death.

I avoided nuts in my first pregnancy due to advice at the time and he's the only one with a nut allergy which is annoying

My son suddenly had a bad reaction to cashews aged 16..we had managed to get that far with him being able to eat peanuts etc no problem. At first it was only cashews but he had an anaphylactic shock when eating pistachio because we didn't know they are almost identical to cashews so now he won't go near any nuts at all (he used to love a mr tom bar)