Peanunt butter and children.

[Twinmummyx2]

Bought it today as my older..older children like it and haven't bought it in ages. Was a bout to give it to Dt's (2.6)..but suddenly remembered you have to be careful with it. Is it the strictly 'not for under 3's' rule..or is it 'keep an eye on them when eating for the first time because of allergy' rule.....

i forget.....

xx

no allergies in my family, DS is 10mths and has it occassionally.

I read in the news about a study which suggests that avoiding exposing children to nuts could actually be causing the rise in nut allergies.

here

There was a section on this yesterday on the BBC news in the morning. They aren't sure why there has been a huge rise in all allergies and why some countries seem to have much less of a reaction to peanuts and yet eat lots of peanuts.

They are currently running a study for 5 years and need more volunteers with children under the age of 11 months.

They are feeding some of them pureed peanuts 3 times a week, others none etc etc to see if they can come up with any conclusive evidence one way or another.

They don't know whether exposing children at a very young age actually builds an immunity like immunisations or whether it increases their chance of having the allergy. As the peanut allergy one is such a restricting allergy to have (my friend's son is very allergic, epi pen etc) I would say better to be safe than sorry and hold off on slathering peanut butter on stuff but don't we still expose our children to "traces of nuts" anyway?

Following on fromthe previous post mentioning the team asking for volunteers:-

Interested parents, who have a child less than 11 months of age with eczema or egg allergy, should contact:

The LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) Study Team
Evelina Children's Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
Telephone: 0800 234 6522
e-mail: [email protected]

posted on the 'other' peanut thread about this.

we're part of the study for dd2. Starting this week.

Interesting one. I hadn't see the BBC article about the new research.

We'll carry on avoiding nuts for our children for the time being (apart from anything, we need to keep a nut-free house for DH's sake and it's easier to train them to avoid nut products). But will keep an eye on the research.