In a significant reversal from past advice, new national health guidelines call for parents to give their children foods containing peanuts early and often, starting when they are infants, as a way to help avoid life-threatening peanut allergies.
The guidelines, issued Thursday by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recommend giving babies puréed food or finger food containing peanut powder or extract before they are 6 months old, and even earlier if a child is prone to allergies and doctors say it is safe to do so. One should never give a baby whole peanuts or peanut bits, experts say, because they can be a choking hazard.
If broadly implemented, the guidelines have the potential to significantly lower the number of children who develop one of the most common and lethal food allergies, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the institute’s director, who called the approach “game changing.”
Could the guidelines mean the end of the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich bans so common in school lunchrooms? “If we can put this into practice over a period of several years, I would be surprised if we would not see a dramatic decrease in the incidence of peanut allergies,” Fauci said.
Peanut allergies are responsible for more deaths from anaphylaxis, or constriction of the airways, than any other food allergy. Though deaths are extremely rare, children who develop a peanut allergy generally do not outgrow it and must be vigilant to avoid peanuts for the rest of their lives.
“You have the potential to stop something in its tracks before it develops,” said Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, chairman of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology’s food allergy committee, and one of the authors of the new guidelines. It appears there “is a window of time in which the body is more likely to tolerate a food than react to it, and if you can educate the body during that window, you’re at much lower likelihood of developing an allergy to that food,” Greenhawt said.


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