According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, babies from three months have a lower risk of developing allergies later in life when introduced to peanuts, eggs, and other well-known allergy-causing food.
The paper, titled EAT (Enquiring About Tolerance), was intended for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and it managed to find a way to drastically cut allergy risk within children. Apparently, researchers found out that when babies aged three months old had a lower chance of developing food allergies when introduced to potential allergens than those who were exposed when they were six months old.
Furthermore, scientists discovered the consumption of one and a half teaspoons of peanut butter and a small boiled egg on a weekly basis would lead to the prevention of allergies to the said food substances. The study involved 1,303 children from England and Wales who were then randomly divided into two groups. It compared babies who were breastfed and given the above-mentioned food from three months to those who were breastfed up until they were six months old.
Apart from eggs and peanut butter, the infants were also introduced to fish, wheat, and sesame, foods that popularly cause allergies. After which, the two sets of babies were tracked in the next three years to see if the subjects developed allergies.
Statistically, children who were introduced to allergens earlier had a 67 percent lower risk of developing allergies than those who were introduced to them at a later date. In addition, it was also found out only 1.4 percent of those who were introduced earlier suffered from egg allergies, compared to 5.5 percent to those who were solely breastfed until six months.
As for peanuts, the numbers were pleasantly alarming: none of the 310 infants belonging to the early introduction group developed an allergy, while 13 of the 525 who were introduced later developed ones did.
"Our study was looking at the introduction of multiple allergenic foods to infants recruited from the general population," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Michael Perkin, in an interview with The Guardian. "This is about what's the best way of introducing allergenic foods to all infants, not just a very selected subgroup. And that is absolutely unique. No one has done anything remotely like this."
The study was run by researchers at St. George's University of London, King's College London, and St. Thomas' NHS.
