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Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows (nytimes.com) 89

Posted by msmash from the encouraging-feedback dept.
Food allergies in children dropped sharply in the years after new guidelines encouraged parents to introduce infants to peanuts, a study has found. The New York Times: For decades, as food allergy rates climbed, experts recommended that parents avoid exposing their infants to common allergens. But a landmark trial in 2015 found that feeding peanuts to babies could cut their chances of developing an allergy by over 80%. [non-paywalled source.] In 2017, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases formally recommended the early-introduction approach and issued national guidelines.

The new study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found that food allergy rates in children under 3 fell after those guidelines were put into place -- dropping to 0.93% between 2017 and 2020, from 1.46% between 2012 and 2015. That's a 36% reduction in all food allergies, driven largely by a 43% drop in peanut allergies. The study also found that eggs overtook peanuts as the No. 1 food allergen in young children.

The study did not examine what infants ate, so it does not show that the guidelines caused the decline. Still, the data is promising. While all food allergies can be dangerous, 80% of people never outgrow one.

Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows More | Reply

Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows

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  • because peanuts is they're going to get in the future.

  • Let kids play in the dirt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Monday October 20, 2025 @11:21AM (#65738438)
    I am not a doctor and I don't know the specific science, but intuition and common sense would suggest that early exposure to "dirt" whether that is actual dirt, potential allergens, or other things the body will have to deal with, is how robust and proper functioning immune systems are built. As humans we evolved living outside and exposed to our environment. Isolating kids from the environment they are going to live in as adults, seems like a bad idea from an evolutionary perspective.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Before the 20th century, infection was about half of deaths. Not letting children get covered in filth and bathing frequently was probably very sound advice in the 19th century. And when antibiotics cease to be effective, we may return to that. Antibiotic resistant staph still doesn't like hot soapy water, or at least won't stick to you as easily.

      • We can have the best of both worlds now. Now we can get covered in filth and recover somewhere healthy. Look at illness rates of someone who grew up on a farm vs city.
        • The farm-vs-city differential goes back centuries -- look at Edward Jenner and his discovery that farm girls, who worked closely with the animals, would contract cowpox but wouldn't contract smallpox afterward, and developed the technique of variolation to introduce cowpox to uninfected individuals, and acquired immunity to smallpox. But smallpox remained a threat in urban areas until variolation, and later vaccination, became common.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      There have been many studies at this point showing that exposure to dirt, dust, and dander early in childhood results in low rates of asthma. I'm personally fondest of the one a friend of mine (Hi Dubes!) worked on in Papua New Guinea where they found the westernization of formerly isolated cultures where dirt floors are replaced by cement results in an increase in asthma.

      I recall recently hearing of a study where it was determined that when an infant's pacifier falls on the ground, and the parent cleans i

  • German study ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onepoint ( 301486 ) on Monday October 20, 2025 @11:25AM (#65738462) Journal

    back in the early 00's I read a study from Germany. Children from big cities, were given exposure via country life to mice and other animals... the subjected population ( it was in excess of 1000 but could have been bigger ), had a lower allergy rate than the control group.

    just sharing my knowledge that's all

  • It's like this allergy exploded out of nowhere and reached rates high enough to force schools to ban peanut butter (which I ate every day). Why? How? WTF happened to make kids allergic to a dietary staple?

    I'm glad to hear it's going away again, but where the hell did it come from?

    • I've heard that the cause was a string of news stories several decades ago about rare but potentially fatal allergic reactions in children that caused parents to remove children from exposure to potential allergens. You can probably already spot the irony in this because the reaction by the parents to try to protect their kids actually made them more susceptible to the problem in the first place.

      It's a bit like how the news can run a story about shampoo shortages and within a week the stores will have em

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It didn't explode out of nowhere. Some people have always been allergic to nuts. Pediatricians jumped the gun a bit around 2000 based on poor evidence and started recommending completely avoiding exposing high risk babies to nuts until they were three years old (in the US). This turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to do and produced a generation of kids with much more severe nut allergies. More kids with more severe allergies caused even more restriction on exposure.

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by StormReaver ( 59959 )

        Pediatricians jumped the gun...

        Pediatricians are not trained to heal. They are trained to dispense completely unnecessary pharmaceuticals to children.

        • Going by prescribed OIT dosages for peanuts, you can have a allergic reaction down to about a little more than 1/250 of a peanut. That means a finely grounded peanut could contaminate up to 200-250~ portions.
          That means in a poorly cleaned environment, guess what is going to actually contaminate everything? Its where the labelled concerning peanut contamination comes from.

          Similarly, if you are paying for OIT for peanuts, you are paying for roughly 0,5 1 3 6 12 20 40 80 120 160 200 240 300mg of peanut per day

        • Just like with any job, some of the people who do it are better than others.
      • Yes, naturally I am aware that nut allergies are not new. What I was not aware of were guideline changes around 2000. I wasn't aware that there had been such guidelines. "Don't feed babies whole peanuts", makes perfect sense, they could choke. I know I was given peanut butter before I was three, at least as part of learning how to make 't' and 'l' sounds. That, I remember.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The recommendation was not to expose babies to tree nuts in any form because so-exposed babies seemed to be more likely to develop nut allergies. It turns out that was due to recall bias and the opposite is actually true.

          Assuming you are older than 25, you (and I) were probably exposed to peanut butter, along with other common food allergens, on purpose by our parents around four or five months old. As I recall (can't confirm) that was the general recommendation prior to 2000. Around 2000 the EU said five m

    • It's like this allergy exploded out of nowhere and reached rates high enough to force schools to ban peanut butter (which I ate every day). Why? How? WTF happened to make kids allergic to a dietary staple?

      I'm glad to hear it's going away again, but where the hell did it come from?

      Fear culture, to be blunt.

      Peanut allergies are related to gluten allergies. If you are really allergic to gluten, it is called Celiac. And that allergy is a problem for celiacs.

      But as the disease du jour, it seems like everyone and their sister is now dreadfully allergic to gluten, although when pressed, they'll just say "I'm gluten sensitive."

      I know of no plants that don't have gluten, so they must be allergic to just about everything.... And vegetarians have long made a meat substitute from pure

      • THANK YOU! All plants DO have a gluten. It's just that for folks like my wife, who genuinely has celiac disease, it's primarily the gliadin in wheat, secalin in rye, and hordein in barley..unlike 'allergy' which is described as a histimine reaction, this one triggers a response that damages the small intestine. Honestly people are now saying today's wheat is what's "making Americans fat" while Europeans eat software wheat. I beg to differ; whilst their pastry has softer wheat, as ours should but likely d
        • I think we need to just accept that each and every piece of food/diet news or information we get is wrong and should be ignored. If they say it's bad today, it'll be good tomorrow, poison the next day, and a cure for cancer the day after that.

          • I think we need to just accept that each and every piece of food/diet news or information we get is wrong and should be ignored. If they say it's bad today, it'll be good tomorrow, poison the next day, and a cure for cancer the day after that.

            The best advice for food is to follow mainstream nutritionists, and not the faddists, the kooks, the media hogs, the body positivity idjits, who are happy to tell you the "Everything you think you know is wrong" BS. A balanced diet with protein and carbs, and everything in moderation.

            Also be very skeptical of the food pyramid. When the sugar industry paid some corrupt researchers to blame fat instead of sugar for dietary problems, it was a disaster for people who followed it.

            • Well, the faddists and media hogs are mostly just taking what mainstream nutritionists say and running wild with it.

              Are eggs good or bad? They were good, then they were bad because of the cholesterol, then good again because even though it's "bad" cholesterol, it's somehow different when in an egg. Is too much salt bad, or do you just need to drink more water? Hell, I remember when olive oil was supposed to be really bad for you, just a heart attack in a bottle, so trans-fats were the way to go.

              So,

              • Well, the faddists and media hogs are mostly just taking what mainstream nutritionists say and running wild with it.

                I think you are confusing the educated nutritionists with people who get their wisdom from the media.

                Granted, in an academic environment, I have ready access to actual educated nutritionists, I've discussed it with them. Their advice never changed. Everything in moderation, and moderation means limit sugar intake, moderation in simple carb intake, complex carbs are preferred (think cruciferous veggies and similar) fat in moderation, but more than so pop culture experts recommended - which was severe lim

              • Yes, I was going to say this too. The most logical, and very best, advice I've ever seen for nutrition was "The Basic 7" done in the early 1940s, with one caveat: they suggest eating some vitaminized margarine to get vitamin A or eating butter. Of course, butter was rationed during WWII -- so I'd skip the vitaminized margarine if you can have dairy products. I've got an old cookbook with better detail than this but you get the idea: https://www.thefoodhistorian.c... [thefoodhistorian.com]
                • Thank you. I had failed to chase down my childhood memory of a similar grouping circa 1960. The chart I recall separated green and yellow vegetables into separate groups, combined milk and butter into "dairy." Perhaps fruit was its own category, not including potatoes.
                  • Sure that seems vaguely familiar to me too. I have been unimpressed with dietary guidelines since the food pyramid.

        • THANK YOU! All plants DO have a gluten. It's just that for folks like my wife, who genuinely has celiac disease, it's primarily the gliadin in wheat, secalin in rye, and hordein in barley..unlike 'allergy' which is described as a histimine reaction, this one triggers a response that damages the small intestine.

          Tell your wife I wish her well.

          A friend of my wife who worked at a restaurant was having issues, mainly diarrhea, indigestion, queasy. She ended up being diagnosed celiac. After finally being diagnosed and then with a dietary change, it was a big turnaround. She went from looking miserable to really good. Even lost weight - her previous weight kept people from thinking of celiac. She wasn't fat, just had some extra pounds. Pounds melted off, and she finally became pregnant and successfully delivered. From

          • Thank you for the good wishes. I understand about fewer carbs and more protein - I'm there too. I've known many people suffering from celiac disease that, when they were eating wheat, were fat. I've also read that they could absorb *fat* with intestinal damage and the damage to things was causing this to happen. I don't know. Here's an interesting thing: My wife also suffered from fibromyalgia. I theorized that damage to gut linings caused 'leaky gut' allowing undigested proteins into the blood, where
      • But didn't the peanut allergies explode before anyone cared about gluten?

        • But didn't the peanut allergies explode before anyone cared about gluten?

          Oh, I wrote that without proper clarification. Peanut allergies are not physically related to gluten allergies. It is in the same group of things that turn into a social issue. Sort of a bogus problem. Whereas people became convinced they were somehow allergic to gluten, and might even have problems with gluten after avoiding it, peanut allergies were largely caused by people trying to shield their children from peanuts, which caused a lot of the issues.

          Anyhow, I could definitely have been more clear - s

          • Ok, gotcha. You're saying it's a socially driven problem caused by people trying to avoid that problem. Which is perverse, but something that happens and a reasonable hypothesis. I have often wondered if it is related to the increase in cesarian births, which seem to be driven by hospital and doctor convenience instead of medical need.

            • Ok, gotcha. You're saying it's a socially driven problem caused by people trying to avoid that problem. Which is perverse, but something that happens and a reasonable hypothesis. I have often wondered if it is related to the increase in cesarian births, which seem to be driven by hospital and doctor convenience instead of medical need.

              Good question about the C-section. There is evidence that the baby picks up valuable bacteria that help their immune system. It is definitely true that breast milk provides health benefits to the child.

              I can't say for certain, but here's a link that approaches the subject from the NIH. It is pretty interesting https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov] Another that addresses the situation in a more user friendly style. https://parenting.firstcry.com... [firstcry.com]

              It is a bit disturbing, convenience over health!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chefren ( 17219 )

        My stomach doesn't like me eating large amounts of wheat bread, whereas other grains aren't nearly as bad. I'm quite sure this has nothing to do with gluten, but I guess eating gluten free bread would help because it's not wheat. I can imagine that most self-diagnosed cases of "gluten sensitiveness" is really something else, like low level IBS, or lack of fibers or something similar.

      • Wikipedia and other sources say that gluten is in cereal grains only, not most vegetables. Not in rice.

      • It's like this allergy exploded out of nowhere and reached rates high enough to force schools to ban peanut butter (which I ate every day). Why? How? WTF happened to make kids allergic to a dietary staple?

        I'm glad to hear it's going away again, but where the hell did it come from?

        Fear culture, to be blunt.

        Looks like I found the person who has mod points, gluten allergies, hay fever, and every other modern day problem. Fear culture archetype

    • My oldest was born in 1999 and the hospital sent us home with a list of foods that we shouldn't introduce to our children until they were three years old. I remember this because both peanut butter and honey were on the list, and one of my favorite foods is peanut butter and honey sandwiches. I have six kids, and I got in trouble quite a bit over the years because I gave my infants bits of my sandwiches.

      What can I say, they liked them...

      It's a bit funny to me that I was actually right about that parti

      • Sometimes it seems to me that they publish those pamphlets before the research has actually happened.

        "It's a bit funny to me that I was actually right about that particular call. Most of the times that my wife and I disagreed about something I was definitely the one that was wrong."
        Being a husband myself, that sounds like, "she had to admit I was actually right for a change!"

        Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go apologize to my wife. She hasn't told me what for yet, but I've been assured that I need

  • From Louis CK:

    You know, you have your bad thoughts. Hopefully you do good things. Everybody has a competition in their brain of good thoughts and bad thoughts. Hopefully, the good thoughts win. For me, I always have both. I have, like, the thing I believe, the good thingâ" Thatâ(TM)s the thing I believeâ" and then thereâ(TM)s this thing, and I donâ(TM)t believe it, but it is there. Itâ(TM)s always this thing and then this thing. Itâ(TM)s become a category in my brain That

  • What about the *studies linking eating peanuts with autism?

    * Would I make s*** like that up?

  • I always imagined that the people who can't pass by the ubiquitous hand sanitizer stations without using it get sick a lot more than the average person because of that constant use.

    • I always imagined that the people who can't pass by the ubiquitous hand sanitizer stations without using it get sick a lot more than the average person because of that constant use.

      Not always - I was an addict long before hand sanitizers were popular. The wife tells me I'm one wash away from having a handwashing fetish.

      When I was a kid, a neighbor kid got something called "trench mouth". My mom told me if I didn't wash my hands, I'd get trench mouth too. Ever since then, my hands have been really clean. And hand sanitizers are used until I can get to soap and water. I even used Phisohex hexachlorophene before they banned it.

      FWIW, I get a cold about once every 4 years.

  • Clearly the people conducting this study were paid off by Big Nut!
  • Are idiots sometimes. What was their plan, eliminate every possible allergen as humanity ends up in sterile bubbles?

    As an example of the proper way to handle allergens, our son came back from the stable where we kept our horses, all splotchy the first time we took him there. Wife took him to our pediatrician. He told us - "Keep taking him there, and unless he starts wheezing, his immune system will adapt and the rash will go away. Only took two visits, and the allergy was gone.

    The concept that if we a

  • While a peanut allergy is serious and can be fatal. The larger picture is a bit strange.

  • Introducing Peanuts (Score:3)

    by Lips ( 26363 ) on Monday October 20, 2025 @04:47PM (#65739226) Journal

    15 years ago I listened to a radio interview with Australian scientists from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute on this issue. They explained how to safely introduce these foods to babies. I took these steps with both my kids at 6 months. They are now 13 and 9 and have always been allergy free. The only food that babies should never have is honey because of the risk of botulism. After 12 months, honey is safe.

    1. Put a very small amount of peanut butter on the outside of the baby's cheek. Wait to see if there is reaction.
    2. Repeat next day.
    3. Next day, put a very small amount of peanut butter on their tongue. Wait to see if there is a reaction.
    4. Repeat next day.
    5. At this stage you should be pretty confident that peanuts are safe.
    6. Repeat with other foods, eg egg, strawberries.

    These days the advice is not to put the food on the baby's skin and instead to put it in a diluted form on the inside of the baby's lip.

  • I used to eat peanut butter like it was going out of style. for 40 years. at 50 Now I can't even look at a peanut or walnut. No instant reaction just a bad headache for several days. Took forever to figure out what it was.

  • Who would have expected that. Well, only everybody with some rational understanding of things.

  • Children's immune systems - and most allergies are immune disorders - aren't fully developed at birth. For the first year or so, the immune system "grows with" the child, learning what substances are common in the environment. If they never get exposed to peanuts - or tropical flower pollen, my son's big problem - then after 18 months or so, the child will "develop" allergies to new and unexpected substances.

    He was born in central California, and lived there until he was over 2. Then I was transferred to th

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