Nuts...why are they so bad

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.

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 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!!

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

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.

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 🤷🏼‍♀️

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.

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.

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