Anirban Das

After multiple recent research showing that feeding peanut-containing foods to infants can reduce the danger of peanut allergies, there are new federal guidelines for parents approximately when to start feeding their babies such foods. The National Institutes of Health announced that a panel of allergic reaction specialists recommends that parents introduce babies to peanut-containing products into the diets of babies as younger as four to six months.

As the NIH summary for parents and caregivers states, introducing babies with severe eczema or egg allergy — situations that grow the risk of peanut-allergic allergy — to meals containing peanuts at that age can lessen the danger of growing peanut allergic reaction. However, the guidelines spell out that those babies need to be evaluated by an allergic reaction expert before their mother and father or caregivers introduce babies to peanut. Infants and small children need to never be given whole peanuts because of the danger of choking, the NIH cautions. Feed a touch bit of the puree to the child, after which monitor for about 10 mins to make sure there is no response together with hives, rash or hassle respiration earlier than persevering with to feed the child peanut-containing meals. For babies without the risk factors of eczema or recognized meals allergies, parents can stick to anything age-suitable food regimen they prefer.

As NPR's Allison Aubrey reports, "parents of infants used to be told to hold off on introducing peanut-containing products, sometimes until the toddler years, especially if there was a family history of allergies." Experts thought this can lessen the possibility of growing an allergic reaction. But during the last few years, Allison says, numerous big research together with this one and this one "have found that babies at high risk for becoming allergic to peanuts are less likely to develop the allergy if they are regularly fed peanut-containing foods in the first year of life."

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels