4 ms·

After confirming we had no history of nut allergies in either family, our pediatrician gave us a free sample of a peanut butter/apple sauce baby food when my da

After confirming we had no history of nut allergies in either family, our pediatrician gave us a free sample of a peanut butter/apple sauce baby food when my daughter was ~3 or 4 months old. I must have spent hundreds of dollars on the stuff over time because it was her favorite. Unfortunately the brand seems to no longer exist. https://my-peanut.com https://my-peanut.com My wife now makes the baby food from scratch since with triplets it would become quite expensive quite quickly to buy premade. Those My Peanut pouches were awfully convenient though. When did the apparent uptick in peanut allergies begin? There was no one in my entire school (~1,000 students) with a severe peanut allergy but now peanuts are banned entirely from campus. Did peanuts change or did children change>

AlanSE 4y ago
From 2005 until now, rates of peanut allergies have increased 2-fold or more in the US. Similar for tree nuts. Anecdotally, it feels like more. There's a huge generational shift even among recent parents, where it feels like a problem just didn't have very long ago, but we do now. It's true that we had bad advice to not introduce peanuts which provably made the problem worse (and has now been reversed), but this is only part of the problem. Papers on the subject make clear that are other countries that are not doing intentional early-introduction (which we are now in the US) and don't have the problem. It's also abundantly clear from the research that the population-scale problem is 100% environmental... as you would expect since the SAME POPULATION saw rates go through the roof in a decade. It's something we did, environmentally, and we don't know what. It also feels frustrating that the medical profession seems overwhelmingly incurious about discovering whatever it is we're doing that is literally harming children.
- myshpa 4y ago
  Same with gluten allergy. I've come across the opinion that the problem isn't really the gluten, but the pesticides. Something similar may be to blame here.

AlanSE 4y ago

From 2005 until now, rates of peanut allergies have increased 2-fold or more in the US. Similar for tree nuts. Anecdotally, it feels like more. There's a huge generational shift even among recent parents, where it feels like a problem just didn't have very long ago, but we do now. It's true that we had bad advice to not introduce peanuts which provably made the problem worse (and has now been reversed), but this is only part of the problem. Papers on the subject make clear that are other countries that are not doing intentional early-introduction (which we are now in the US) and don't have the problem. It's also abundantly clear from the research that the population-scale problem is 100% environmental... as you would expect since the SAME POPULATION saw rates go through the roof in a decade. It's something we did, environmentally, and we don't know what. It also feels frustrating that the medical profession seems overwhelmingly incurious about discovering whatever it is we're doing that is literally harming children.

myshpa 4y ago
Same with gluten allergy. I've come across the opinion that the problem isn't really the gluten, but the pesticides. Something similar may be to blame here.