Fight Peanuts With Peanuts: Stemming the Nut Allergy Epidemic

Exposure to these legumes may help ward off kids’ allergic reactions to them later

Here’s some encouraging news for stemming what was beginning to look like a peanut allergy epidemic in children across the world.

Well, there is mounting evidence which goes to show that exposing children early, very early to peanuts might avoid food allergies later in life. In fact, there is almost an 80% reduction in peanut allergy in children who are introduced to these legumes in the first three to 11 months of life.

The finding is revolutionary and completely contradicts the World Health Organisation recommendation that babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. It also turns decades of conventional wisdom on its head which propagated completely avoiding peanuts till the age of three.