Cooking With Kids: Food Allergies in the News
Everyone seems to agree that childhood food allergies are on the rise, and nobody knows why. Newsweek steps in this week with a cover story. For the most part, it's standard news magazine fare: Kick off with a scary anecdote about a kid with a peanut allergy ("When she goes trick-or-treating this week, her candy will be scarier than any costume"), then backpedal in the last few paragraphs and admit that the problem is not actually as widespread as people think it is (only 1 in 100 kids has a peanut allergy—not reassuring at all, of course, if your child is the one).
The most interesting research in the article comes from a London researcher, Dr. Gideon Lack, who thinks maybe we should all be eating more peanuts. In places (particularly Africa) where peanuts are a staple of the diet, peanut allergies are nearly nonexistent, and it's unlikely to have much to do with genetics. A recent 60 Minutes broadcast with Anderson Cooper examined a third-world nutrition supplement called (I love this name) Plumpy'Nut, a fortified peanut butter. "What about peanut allergies?" Cooper asked Dr. Susan Shepherd, head of Doctors Without Borders in Niger.
"In developing countries, food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries," Shepherd said. This could be because of exposure to pathogens (the "hygiene hypothesis"), exposure to the allergens themselves, or something altogether different.
So back in England, Lack is conducting a clinical trial, giving babies a peanut supplement to see if it will ward off peanut allergies. He cautions that you should not try this at home.
But the conventional wisdom, to withhold common allergens like peanuts and shellfish until age two (or even older) is very hard to follow. We have no history of allergies in our family, and we didn't even bother trying. Like Dr. Lack, I'm not recommending this approach, but I suspect it's common.
How did your family handle this? Did you follow the parenting book advice of introducing new foods a few days apart to watch for allergic reactions? Until your kid was how old? If your child does have an allergy, how and at what age did you diagnose it?
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. He also maintains the blog Roots and Grubs. His favorite food is pad Thai. | Photograph from iStockphoto.com.
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Comments are closed: 14 Comments:
1 in 100 sounds like a lot to me, especially given how dangerous this allergy is. Did they compare it to numbers in the past; i.e., is there any real basis for the perception that it's more common now?
emily20008 at 5:45PM on 11/01/07
I agree--1 in 100 is statistically a LOT of kids. That's shocking!
klg19 at 6:06PM on 11/01/07
emily, I think the answer is that clinicians *mostly* agree that peanut and other serious allergies have become more prevalent.
It's also worth noting that Lack's hypothesis is plenty controversial. Peanut butter isn't exactly an unusual food in the diet of American kids, and other researchers believe that over- rather than underexposure is the explanation for the increase in allergies. That fails to explain why allergies of all kinds are so rare in developing countries.
mamster at 6:56PM on 11/01/07
I was over cautious in introducing nuts of all kinds since my pediatrician said that if a child were to have the allergy, they would be better able to withstand an attack at an older age. We waited until age three, also because Izzy's first cousin has the peanut allergy.
izzy's mama at 9:07PM on 11/01/07
The other explanation for "more prevalent" is that the actual prevalence has not changed but the rate of diagnosis has.
So the other explanation for why peanut allergies aren't a problem in developing Africa is that kids with fatal peanut allergies die before they figure it out...
laurelfan at 10:28PM on 11/01/07
We avoided all nuts/ peanuts until age 3. The end result was our daughter has a peanut allergy, fortunately not through a serious reaction to her first taste of peanut butter.
You can't imagine how much a peanut allergy changes raising a child.
daveg227 at 11:02PM on 11/01/07
Dave, just thinking about it makes me freak out.
Laurel, I think the differences between populations are real. It's not like the doctors working in Niger don't know about peanut allergies and how to recognize the symptoms. An upward trend in Western populations is, of course, harder to prove.
mamster at 12:52AM on 11/02/07
I have a 3 year old with a peanut allergy too (read about it at http://peanutfree.blogspot.com). It is a real challenge day to day, but one you get used to. With food labeling laws life is much better than it was 2 years ago. I have no allergies and neither does my husband - my mom has a shellfish allergy. It's tough to wrap your brain around how this could happen. I just hope she's one of the lucky 20% of kids who outgrow the allergy.
As for the statistic, I believe it. My daughter's day care class has 24 kids. 3 have peanut allergy (2 of the three are allergic to all nuts), 1 has a milk allergy, and another has a shellfish allergy. That's 5 kids in one class. It's unsettling for sure.
missus_p at 2:01AM on 11/02/07
My two have no allergies. I tried to follow the strict guidelines of introducing one food at a time but ran afoul at eight months, by eighteen months they were both into sushi (the raw kind).
I agree with those that point to increased diagnosis. Once a kid has any reaction to peanuts, they are in the allergy camp and wisely avoid what could potentially be a deadly trigger. My pet conspiracy theory is that aspertame messes with the immune system, no proof of course.
On a side note what are some favorite peanut butter alternatives? We are considerate of the peanut allergy kids at school and have tried soynut, sunflower and cashew butter. Any other suggestions?
LearP at 2:18AM on 11/02/07
LearP, good question. I keep meaning to try sunflower butter, which sounds good. Iris likes a just plain butter and jelly sandwich--her favorite butter is lavender. I've been thinking about what I could do with tahini, because she loves sesame anything.
mamster at 10:13AM on 11/02/07
it was when my son was in a play class at age 5: the teacher and the kids were making a bird house and using peanut butter..before her eyes one of the children began to swell - she saw it on his face and called 911 immediately saving his life...only because she herself had a child inflicted with this allergy that she had in the back of her mind that she was working with peanut butter and no children had been diagnosed in the class having a memo sent home...turns out this child had never had food related to peanuts or peanut butter because he instinctively never wanted...also to that date a first child..
blondee47 at 2:32PM on 11/02/07
mamster, how about honey-sesame spread? Those flavors go well together and might be more similar to the sweet-nut flavor that makes peanut butter popular.
ExpatChef at 4:21PM on 11/02/07
My niece has a peanut allergy and my Sister in Law substitutes cream cheese for peanut butter in pretty much all of the peanut butter kids foods. Cream Cheese and Jelly sandwiches, cream cheese and celery ants on a log etc...
vox8ight at 7:56PM on 11/02/07
My son was diagnosed w/ dairy/all nuts allergy early. We knew at 3 months he was allergic to dairy ( I dropped mac and cheese on him while nursing and he broke out in hives all over his body) -- and discovered just over 1 that he was allergic to peanuts (of course, I had eaten them ALL through pregnancy and nursing -- LIVED on them -- although I should've known better) which was stupid to even try with the already history of allergies.
My child had a reaction the first time he tasted peanut butter so giving him "more" would certainly not have helped. We carry an epi-pen everywhere -- it's tough! New studies are investigating giving them small bits of the allergen (ONLY IN A CLINICAL SETTING!) as opposed to the old theory of complete avoidance -- both at Duke (peanut) and John Hopkins (dairy)
dcmove at 8:58PM on 11/29/07