Craving peanut butter.................

[SANA]

Okay, I am coming to 23 weeks and I recently had a peanut butter sandwich & now craving one everyday. My MIL ( who has 11 kids & 19 grandchildren) cant see it doing any harm as no one has a peanut allergy........comments please would be helpful

I always thought you had to avoid them only if there was a history of allergies..?
I have a miriam stoppard pregnancy book where she suggests peanut butter on wholemeal toast as a nutritious snack during pgy.

I ate peanut butter and all three of mine are fine - but we have no history of allergies....

I ate peanut butter almost daily with all three children - no allergies here

I thought the advice had changed re this - that in fact avoiding foods can trigger allergies in the child???

we've had allergies in our family so I avoided peanuts, but ate cashews instead, cashew nut butter is great, even yummier than peanut butter, although a bit more expensive, if your supermarket doesn't stock it buy some from a health food shop.

My doctor told me to avoid peanuts, but if it's only if there's a family history of allergies (which there isn't), i might just stick me fingers up at his advice and go and get a huge big bag of KP!!!!!!!!!!

I was worried about this too, and missing my peanut butter on toast desperately, so I did some research online and found that all of the newspapers said that pregnant women shouldn't eat peanuts, but all of the more medical type people said what everyone else has suggested - if you have a history of allergies, avoid them, but if not, they're v good for protein.

I've been happily having my peanut butter toast on the weekends for a few weeks now

okay I am getting home quick to eat some peanut butter....thanks for the messages

I am cravings of peanut butter, too (normally am not too crazy about it), but have a family history to all sort of allergies including nuts. That's a tricky one, isn't it? Have done no research on it but would be interested in link about opposite effect (that LO is more prone to allergies if nuts avoided durign pg).

My craving IS peanut butter (along with sweet things, ice cream and ice pop's) on toast which I do have. I cant find anyone in our family/s that do have or ever have had peanut allergies, DH tried to say that somethimes he has a reaction to nuts to get me to stop eating peanuts and peanut butter as he reads my PG books and then gets worried, I just said "good job you dont bat for the other side then !" Nothing and no one can stop me having my peanut butter on toast, in fact just off to have some now.....MMMMmmmmm!

Sorry for a brief hi-jack, but I have standard (as it were) allergies - I'm allergic to pollen, cats, etc and I get asthma and eczema, but I've never had any food allergies or intolerances.

A couple of weeks ago (when I was about 8 weeks) I ate a load of peanuts without even realising what I'd done. I'm now 12+3 and really wanting peanut butter on toast. I had my 12 weeks scan on Friday and everything was fine. Does this mean that peanuts are OK for my bean?

Also how serious is the medical advice? As we're constantly reminded on food packaging, there is a significant chance that most of the food we eat contains nuts, so its not like we can avoid them unless we eat nothing but raw fruit and veg?

Appartenly according to the head genetics woman I saw at Queen Charlottes the peanut thing is completely unfounded and accordign to her 'bollocks'!

I've had peanut butter on toast in this pregnancy. Being able to have it took the craving away and I haven't had it since!

Thats awful kerrymum your poor ds. I always understood it wasn't just food allergies that would mean you should avoid peanuts but any allergies, including hayfever and asthma. Dh has hayfever and there is asthma in the family, although no food allergies, so I avoided the peanuts but ate cashews, I felt it was worth the sacrifice for 9 mths+.

Naetha -- the danger is supposed to be that by eating peanuts you could "sensitise" the fetus to the proteins in the peanuts, and they would be more likely to develop an allergy later on. An allergy can't be detected on a scan. So you can't know if any harm done until the child is on solids and tries peanuts.. .and the allergy can develop at any point in life, anyway.

I have a strong feeling that theory is incomplete, which is why I would still eat peanuts myself. But I can understand why others choose not to risk it.

Plus right now I have such bad pregnancy nausea that I eat what few things I can tolerate, if that's lots of peanut butter every day, so be it.

Every parenting decision involves risk; There are no risk-free decisions. Everyone has to decide for themselves which risks bother them most (compared to possible benefits or other priorities).

Surely unless you treat yourself as A person that has a nut allergy then the risk is still there even if you do not eat the god dam nuts, due to the fact there are lots of products that have nuts in them, trace of nuts, store near nuts and so on, so you can never be sure that your not taking the risk anyway, and surely the baby is far more protective in their mothers tummy from this sort of thing, and why do most PG books/mags say stay away from nuts if their is a family history of nut allergies no mention of other allergies!

have you tried almond nut butter or something else

is very similar