Dealing with allergies can range from a minor inconvenience to a life threatening situation. Those on the extreme end clearly need to be more attentive to what they get exposed to, and parents have been told forever to monitor what their kids are exposed to for the same fear of an extreme reaction. As such, parents were instructed to delay the introduction of peanuts in their child’s diet until they were three or four, but thanks to enterprising research we now know that it’s best to introduce peanuts earlier and tiny doses. It’s important that we continue to question assumptions about allergies and the world around us because you never know what could be discovered (or modified).
For decades, doctors had recommended delaying feeding children peanuts and other foods likely to trigger allergies until age three. But in 2015, Gideon Lack at King’s College London published the groundbreaking Learning Early About Peanut Allergy, or LEAP, trial.
Lack and colleagues showed that introducing peanut products in infancy reduced the future risk of developing food allergies by more than 80 per cent. Later analysis showed the protection persisted in about 70 per cent of kids into adolescence.
The study immediately sparked new guidelines urging early introduction of peanuts, and the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends introducing common allergenic foods, including peanuts, to babies between four and six months of age.