8 ms·
> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat. If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it
by nerpderp82 4y ago
> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat.
If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it.
> There had been long-standing advice to avoid foods that can trigger allergies during early childhood. At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old.
This advice was never based on science.
Cultures where infants are fed on the same broad spectrum of foods that adults eat have MUCH lower incidence of allergies. France and Israel to name two.
Datapoint of 1, I started giving my own child chewed up food I was eating at about 2.5 months. She was eyeballing some chicken I was eating, I popped it out of my mouth, offered it to her and she ravenously devoured it.
A couple weeks later, I wiped a small amount of peanut butter on her lip and checked for any allergic reaction, then proceeded to slowly ramp the amount the next day.
Same thing with shellfish. I am not suggesting anyone else do this, but it worked for us.
Train how you live as soon as possible.
- loco5niner 4y agoCareful with that. You likely are also transferring the bacteria that cause cavities from your mouth to your babies mouth. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1991790211000043 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S199179021...
- sdflhasjd 4y agoOn the other hand, my mum did the same to me with muesli and I developed a nut allergy.
- the_mar 4y agoyeah 70% not 100% some people will still develop allergies
- mburee 4y agoCould also be related to hay fever if you have that. [1] I had allergies for basically all my life but the food stuff only started at around 10 or 11 years. Now I can't really eat any uncooked fruit, vegetables or nuts. Interestingly enough, most citrus fruit are just fine, something with not being exposed to those pollen maybe... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome
- hinkley 4y agoDid I not read at some point that nursing mother eating the allergenic foods offer some benefits to the child as well?
- darth_avocado 4y agoThis is one of those grandma’s tales that I’ve heard. Feeding pregnant women (and nursing mothers) a diet that is varied in nature allows the child to be healthier and allergy free.
- guywithabike 4y agoNot sure how widespread this advice is, but my son’s pediatrician had us start introducing peanut butter before he was eating solids by adding progressively more peanut butter to his bottle. So it feels like this is becoming the recommended approach to avoiding food allergies.
- Spooky23 4y agoIt’s become more widespread guidance in the last decade. There are a few studies iirc comparing cousins living in the UK as opposed to Israel. The Israeli kids get a peanut based cracker as a common snack and have much lower incidence of peanut allergies. I think in the US the issue is that there isn’t a ton of published material on it. My info may be out of date as my kids are well past this stage.
- fullstop 4y agoOne thing to be careful about here, and I don't have any data or skin in the game here, is survivorship bias. It would be worth noting the difference in deaths from anaphylactic shock in very early childhood by country. I guess what I'm getting at is that you might not be counted as having a peanut allergy if you're dead.
- firstlink 4y agoEssentially illegal in the US though, given school requirements.
- dragonwriter 4y agoNo, its not. For one thing, schooling (even preschool) starts well after the target age for this.
- rtkwe 4y agoDecidedly not. There's plenty of meals given to kids outside of school to perform this intervention, it doesn't need to be in every meal on top of what other people have said about the timing.
- raverbashing 4y agoExactly How in tarnation did anyone think keeping babies away from the allergens would help with allergies is beyond me Which countries has the least amount of peanut allergies? Countries where people give it without much concern Thanks to these misguided though there are people severely allergic to peanuts
- dragonwriter 4y ago> How in tarnation did anyone think keeping babies away from the allergens would help with allergies is beyond me No one, AFAIK, thought it would reduce the rates of people developing allergies. What people thought was that it would reduce the rates of people having dangerous allergic reactions as infants (which it does) and that the longer term effects would not be so negative as to outweigh that benefit (which seems, in the case of certain allergens – particularly peanuts – to very much not be the case.)
- mrpopo 4y agoNot saying that you're wrong, but your line of reasoning is incorrect. It could also have been because all the people with peanut allergies have died and the people surviving all have some sort of genetic advantage against peanut allergy. Again, the above reasoning is wrong but not completely baseless.
- raverbashing 4y agoI see what you mean, I'm not so sure if there's a genetic connection to allergies (specific to allergies, not intolerances, which are a different thing) and/or how strong it is relating to different elements
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- 1970-01-01 4y ago>Train how you live as soon as possible. There are dangerous caveats to this advice! For example, don't feed infants fish or shellfish more than this allergy test. They contain one of the highest levels of mercury in the entire food web. Best to wait until the they've grown.
- eloff 4y agoUnless you feed them huge quantities of seafood, I fail to see how this is an issue. From an allergy standpoint small exposure would be enough to reduce risk of developing an allergy.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoThe new FDA risk-benefit analysis is currently ongoing and will be published later this year. Right now, it's no more than 2oz/week for certain fish. https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/the-role-of-seafood-in-child-growth-and-development https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/the-role-of-seafo...
- CameronNemo 4y agoEven small amounts of mmercury during early development can have significant effects.
- _yb2s 4y agoMost seafood is actually very low in mercury, only a few species that are high in the food chain (e.g. shark) are high in mercury due to bio-magnification. Moreover, it has been observed that traditional fishing cultures that have a high mercury intake have zero symptoms of mercury toxicity. The leading hypothesis of this is that the high selenium content in these same fish is protective against mercury exposure[1]. Consider also the observation that cultures with high fish intake have good health outcomes, and that omega-3 supplementation fails to recover those benefits. This makes me feel that eating a lot of fish is likely much healthier than avoiding it, and avoiding it is probably leading to nutrition deficiency, including possibly selenium, which is a much bigger risk than the potential for mercury toxicity. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0161813X20301546 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01618...
- unixgoddess 4y agohowever, there are other factors to keep in mind. you mention giving your chewed up food: I read a few years ago that babies who sleep in the same bed as the parents have a much higher mortality rate; assuming it's true, I guess that with mouth to mouth germ exchange it would be even worse. Also, a lot of food today is full of chemical residues etc that are tolerated by adults, not quite so by babies.
- mertd 4y agoIsn't the mortality because of SIDS? It has not much to do with germ transmission.
- bradleyjg 4y agoSIDS and also suffocation, which is now separated out from SIDS. However, in recent years there has been a backlash to the backlash, and under certain conditions (no drugs/alcohol, exclusive breastfeeding, no blankets) some doctors will recommend co-sleeping. It’s controversial.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Isn’t the mortality because of SIDS? SIDS isn’t a cause, SIDS is a name for when no cause is known.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoIs also a concession to the parents whose kid probably just died of suffocation. Much like the historical trend of not reporting overdose deaths.
- rocketbop 4y agoWhy would exposure to more germs be bad? Seems like it would be positive. If you’re talking about sudden infant death, I don’t think it’s related to germs, although it’s a poorly understood phenomenon.
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- bryanlarsen 4y ago> This advice was never based on science. No, it was based on common sense. If X causes problems, not doing X is generally a good idea. It turns out that in this particular scenario, common sense was wrong. But allergies weren't understood by science, so all we had to go on was common sense.
- ssivark 4y agoWhat’s “common sense” is drastically different depending on whether you assume a complex system is static or adaptive.
- magicalist 4y agoYou can expose a six month old to honey as well but their complex and adaptive digestion system still isn't going to kill the botulism spores that might be in it. "I don't know how this bad thing works, better rub it on my gums" is not a good strategy in general.
- soperj 4y ago> common sense was wrong I don't think that's been proven conclusively.
- atomicUpdate 4y agoThis is literally an article with proof that the previous guidance we was wrong and actively harmful to the children that were subjected to it.
- bigbillheck 4y ago> If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it. It's a whole lost more complicated than this, see for example antigens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigen and epitopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitope
- bell-cot 4y agoFeeding infants and toddlers food which an adult has pre-chewed for them is an old practice. Older than humankind, actually - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premastication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premastication
- lm28469 4y ago> At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old. > This advice was never based on science. I'm like 99% sure this was to avoid babies/young kids choking on peanut
- salamanderman 4y agoMaybe at first it was a sane reason like this. When we were having a kid, though, we were definitely told by reputable sources (like an obgyn) not to feed the kid peanuts in any form until 3 years old. We decided that the bureaucracy of what advice to give hadn't caught up to the science we'd read, and just tried small amounts of peanut butter when we moved to solids.
- dham 4y agoAn OBGYN isn't a scientist. Move to "solids" is such a weird thing to say. Once you're off breast milk / formula you just go to whatever. The pureed food has to be one of the biggest scams in human history and leads to required orthodontia.
- bialpio 4y agoEven the article mentions this: "Experts warn whole or chopped nuts and peanuts are a choking risk and should not be given to children under five."
- m463 4y agoOn the other hand, I wonder if infants without a mature immune system might do better not being exposed to a lifetime of pathogens in found adult saliva. I think the normal way babies ramp their immune system is breastfeeding - their body struggles with soemthing, it is transferred to mom's nipple when breastfeeding, the mother forms an immune response, it is incorporated into the breast milk, the baby retrieves it next breast feeding. I mean too early. Not sure when too early is.
- dsego 4y agoI am always worried about sharing my caries or gum disease bacteria, so I avoid sharing spoons and food. And then I've seen mothers pick up a pacifier from the ground and put it in their mouth to "clean" it before giving it back to the baby.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoDo you [personally] have specifically bad bacteria in your gums?
- dsego 4y agoI do have some gum recession, and a lot of fillings. My wife has better dental health, even though she gives her teeth less attention than me in terms of hygiene. But I've also found articles online about spreading cavities. Here is an example. > Dental caries, commonly known as tooth decay, is the single most common chronic childhood disease. In fact, it is an infectious disease. Mothers with cavities can transmit caries-producing oral bacteria to their babies when they clean pacifiers by sticking them in their own mouths or by sharing spoons. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112402.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112402.h...
- cpuguy83 4y agoI think this advice was more about not giving the baby a known allergen because they are a baby and it could kill them and it could be difficult to even tell they are having a problem because babies are often crying for any number of reasons. I'm not saying the advice is sound, just giving a perspective on what led to that advice. It's not about "they might develop an allergy so don't give it to them" it's "they may be allergic already and cause significant harm".
- havblue 4y agoThis is a point of frustration between my wife and me and it repeats every 6 months or so. "Honey, let's feed the girls some shrimp so they don't get allergies." "No. Not yet. I don't want them to get mercury poisoning. It can wait."
- bradleyjg 4y agoI was under the impression that shrimp was among the lowest mercury seafood, along with herring, anchovies, and a few others.
- stametseater 4y agoThe smaller the fish, the less mercury it has. The ones you have to watch out for are the big fish that eat lots of medium fish that in turn eat lots of smaller fish; each stage in the food chain concentrates more and more mercury. Sharks and tuna have a lot of mercury. And smaller tuna, like skipjack, have less mercury than larger tuna. Also I think the threat of mercury in fish is greatly overstated anyway. Look at Japan; they eat tons of fish and they're not all brain damaged dummies.
- ericd 4y agoI thought mercury was mostly an issue with apex predators?
- havblue 4y agoThat was more of a paraphrased quote. Her concern is primarily in farm raised seafood I believe. It is an issue with apex predators though, since I'm married to one.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoYou'd have to be eating an unreasonable amount of seafood to get enough mercury in you to be a problem.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DebtDeflation 4y ago>Cultures where infants are fed on the same broad spectrum of foods that adults eat have MUCH lower incidence of allergies. Most mammalian wild animals (and humans until 100 years or so ago) drink their mothers milk up until they're able to eat regular food and then from that point on eat whatever adults of their species eat. They don't go through 5 different levels of Gerber before eating real food.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago> I started giving my own child chewed up food I was eating at about 2.5 months You gave a TWO AND A HALF MONTH OLD CHILD chicken??? this is so incredibly careless that I HAVE to call out this crazy misinformation on HN. DO not ever replicate this please, everyone else.
- varenc 4y agoWhat's the risk exactly? Googling around mentions the choking risk and the correlation behind obesity and early life introduction of solid foods. But if a small amount of chicken is pre-chewed by the parent and given as a rare one-off under observation those risks seem to be mitigated. Based on your strong reaction though I'm guessing there's risks? Inability to digest the chicken perhaps? Just curious
- heywhatupboys 4y agoit is extremely bad for the child's digestive system etc. not everything is a "life or death thing"