Am I right in saying that chestnuts are not really a nut?

[trixymalixy]

DS is allergic to peanuts, so we avoid all nuts. I'm making chestnut stuffing for the rest of the family. Can he have some?

its a tree nut, is he allergic to tree nuts?

my son can eat them, and other tree nuts direct from the shell, as long as they are not cross contaminated with peanuts,

the only very small positive he has is to brazil nut, which is easy to avoid.

he eats almonds, walnuts and chestnuts with no problem.

this is all be advised as ok by his allergy doc.

nottirednow, that's really interesting. DS has reacted to pulses and also to stone-fruits. The consultant said the stone fruits were related to oral allergy syndrome. Wish I understood all this a bit better!

Does this mean conkers are also tree nuts? I posted about that a while ago and was told they weren't but conkers look as if they are related to chestnuts... anyway, I didn't like to risk it.

Peanuts are not actually nuts. They're legumes

conkers are not human food, so hence no development of any food allergy , but are not good to eat, in fact , not safe to eat at all.

i am happy to let my son play with them.

Good point eragon - I wasn't thinking of allowing DS to eat them!! I was just wondering about him getting conker-juice on his skin.

Oh, I thought they were technically a fruit rather than a tree nut.

nottirednow, thank you. I love the way you make technical information seem easy to understand. I get far more up-to-date information from you lovely ladies on mumsnet than I do from the hospital...

I'm guessing that DS is sensitive to ara h2 and h8 (don't know about h2 because he's never been exposed to actual nuts but the RAST test was high). I guess he's okay with h3 - which makes sense of why he can have soya while some other nut-allergic kids can't.

That's useful information about the conkers - thank you. I feel much better about allowing him to play conkers next year.