Peanut, Peanut Butter (and Jelly!)

You don’t have to be a parent to know that everyone’s favourite lunch standby, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, is no longer welcome in many schools. And it’s no surprise, when you hear tales of children having serious, even life-threatening, allergic reactions to nuts. Hannah has attended 3 daycare centres now, and two of them banned peanuts and all other nuts outright. And I am fine with that, because a small inconvenience for me can mean life or death to another child. Preschoolers do not understand the potential gravity of a peanut allergy when someone’s waving a tempting snack in their face.

Allergies can be scary stuff, and popular wisdom holds that the best way to combat them is to avoid exposing kids to allergens. Current recommendations include pregnant and nursing moms avoiding peanuts altogether, and waiting until age 2 or 3 to introduce peanuts to children. The rationale is that it’s the prevalence of peanuts that leads to allergic reactions, so by limiting exposure we can limit the reaction. The other argument I’ve heard is that by waiting until children’s digestive and immune systems are more mature, they will be less likely to have allergic reactions.

I’ve heard all of this stuff, but I will admit that at our house we’ve been pretty lax. We have no family history of allergies, and have never seen any sort of reaction in our kids, which could explain our attitude. As it is my husband eats a couple of peanut butter sandwiches every day. And when I was pregnant a peanut butter sandwich was one of the few foods I could stomach. And although I didn’t give Hannah peanut butter until she was nearly 2, I prepared food on the same surfaces that we use to make our sandwiches. Food from our kitchen would definitely come with an allergy alert warning label.

So you can imagine my delight when some recent studies reinforced my approach. One recent study compared children in Israel, who ate peanut butter as infants, with children from the UK who overwhelmingly did not. The British children had a tenfold higher incidence of peanut allergy, which could not be explained by any other factors. Early exposure may actually have a protective effect, rather than a sensitizing effect. And the American Academy of Pediatrics has changed their policy as well. Here is an excerpt from their clinical report:

Although solid foods should not be introduced before 4 to 6 months of age, there is no current convincing evidence that delaying their introduction beyond this period has a significant protective effect on the development of atopic disease…This includes delaying the introduction of foods that are considered to be highly allergic, such as fish, eggs, and foods containing peanut protein.

(According to Wikipedia an atopic reaction is an “allergic hypersensitivity affecting parts of the body not in direct contact with the allergen.” This includes life-threatening reactions such as anaphylaxis.)

I don’t think that I will feed Jacob peanut butter anytime soon. However, it’s good to know that extreme avoidance is not necessary. I think it will make the whole solid food thing that much more relaxed than it was for Hannah, when warnings about avoiding potential allergens were everywhere. And it’s even better to know that I can enjoy the occasional PB & J without any guilt that I am taking my baby’s very life into my hands.

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