{"id":130230,"date":"2016-11-11T17:52:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T17:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/hey-baby-meet-peanuts-how-and-when-to-safely-introduce-the-food\/"},"modified":"2016-11-11T17:52:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T17:52:53","slug":"hey-baby-meet-peanuts-how-and-when-to-safely-introduce-the-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/hey-baby-meet-peanuts-how-and-when-to-safely-introduce-the-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Baby, Meet Peanuts: How And When To Safely Introduce The Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/11\/11\/peanut-butter-1_custom-d66fecb16c13e2f14a698f2ff150d6220572c6fe-s1100-c15.jpg\" class=\"img lazyOnLoad\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n                Upcoming federal guidelines will discuss how and when to safely add peanuts to an infant&#8217;s diet. Peanuts and straight peanut butter are a choking hazard, doctors say, but a bit of watered-down puree of peanut butter at around 6-months-old can help prevent peanut allergies.<\/p>\n<p>                <b class=\"credit\"><\/p>\n<p>                    Brian Hagiwara\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>                <\/b><br \/>\n                <b class=\"hide-caption\"><b>hide caption<\/b><\/b>\n            <\/p>\n<p>            <b class=\"toggle-caption\"><b>toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"credit\"><\/p>\n<p>        Brian Hagiwara\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>    <\/span><\/p>\n<p>        <img alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Upcoming federal guidelines will discuss how and when to safely add peanuts to an infant&#8217;s diet. Peanuts and straight peanut butter are a choking hazard, doctors say, but a bit of watered-down puree of peanut butter at around 6-months-old can help prevent peanut allergies.<\/p>\n<p>        <span class=\"credit\"><\/p>\n<p>            Brian Hagiwara\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>        <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Peanut allergies can be among a parent&#8217;s biggest worries, though we&#8217;ve had good evidence<\/a> for more than a year that when most babies are 6-months-old, or so, introducing foods that contain finely ground peanuts can actually reduce their chances of becoming allergic to the legumes. Even so, many parents are scared to do that.<\/p>\n<p>At this week&#8217;s annual scientific meeting<\/a> of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in San Francisco, doctors are discussing the upcoming federal guidelines about how and when to safely add peanuts to an infant&#8217;s diet.<\/p>\n<p>The final version, being developed under the auspices of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, won&#8217;t be released until early next year. But Dr. Amal Assa&#8217;ad<\/a>, an immunologist and allergist with the Cincinnati Children&#8217;s Hospital Medical Center, who helped write the recommendations, offered Shots a hint of where she and her colleagues are headed.<\/p>\n<p>First, parents need to know whether their infant is at high risk of developing a peanut allergy, Assa&#8217;ad says. Signs of that include a history of severe eczema<\/a>, which causes dry, itchy skin and rashes, or an allergy to eggs.<\/p>\n<aside id=\"ad-backstage-wrap\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>If your infant falls into that category, she says, ask your pediatrician whether the baby should be further checked by an allergist for a particular sensitivity to peanuts. Even most babies who show that sort of sensitivity can be introduced to age-appropriate foods containing peanuts and get the allergy-preventing benefit, she says, though in some cases doctors will advise the introduction take place in the doctor&#8217;s office, not at home.<\/p>\n<p>The guidelines are largely based on dramatic findings<\/a> from a large study published in the <em>New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> in 2015. Researchers found that babies at high-risk of developing a peanut allergy who were fed the equivalent of about 4 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter each week, starting at the age of 4- to 11-months-old, were about 80 percent less likely to develop an allergy to the legume by age 5 than similar kids who avoided peanuts. The benefit held up even after the children stopped getting the puree, a follow-up study<\/a> found.<\/p>\n<p>Allergic reactions to peanuts can range<\/a> from hives or rashes to, in the most extreme cases, trouble breathing and even death.<\/p>\n<p>For children who are <em>not<\/em> at high risk for developing a peanut allergy, foods containing the legume can be introduced at home starting at about 6-months-old, after a healthy baby has started to eat some other solid food, Assa&#8217;ad says. (Peanut products shouldn&#8217;t be the first solid food a baby gets, she adds.)<\/p>\n<p>Still, under no circumstance should parents feed their babies whole peanuts, which is a clear choking hazard, cautions Dr. Ruchi S. Gupta<\/a>, a pediatrician and immunologist at Northwestern University, in an ACAAI video aimed at parents<\/a>. Even peanut butter can be risky at that age, Gupta explains, because it&#8217;s thick and sticky.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to introduce the food, she says, is to add hot water to two teaspoons of peanut butter to make a warm puree. Put a little of this puree on the tip of a spoon and feed it to your child. Then wait and watch for 10 minutes, she advises, checking the baby for any negative reaction, such as hives, a rash, behavior changes or trouble breathing. If all is OK you can continue to feed the puree slowly; but keep an eye on the child for another two hours or so.<\/p>\n<p>If the baby continues to show no signs of an allergic reaction, Gupta says, it&#8217;s safe to continue, adding other peanut-containing foods as time goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Upcoming federal guidelines will discuss how and when to safely add peanuts to an infant&#8217;s diet. Peanuts and straight peanut butter are a choking hazard, doctors say, but a bit of watered-down puree of peanut butter at around 6-months-old can help prevent peanut allergies. Brian Hagiwara\/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Brian Hagiwara\/Getty Images Upcoming <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/hey-baby-meet-peanuts-how-and-when-to-safely-introduce-the-food\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}