Two articles within days of each other, one reported by the ABC here in Australia and the other by the BBC.
The ABC article reports on a study conducted in Canberra it found that:
the increase [in peanut allergies] has come despite increased efforts by parents to avoid giving toddlers peanuts in their diet.
The author of the report of the findings, Dr. Raymond Mullins, notes that “that guidelines promoting peanut avoidance in young diets may be counterproductive”, but also says that the study “rejects suggestions that the increase in allergies is the result of over-anxious parents”. Surely this is contradictory. If over-anxious parents are avoiding giving peanuts to their children then that is one of the causes of the rise in peanut allergies.
This is borne out by the study reported by the BBC where “a team from Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s Hospital exposed four children to peanuts over a six-month period, gradually building up their tolerance.” In addition to the join Israeli and British study regarding early exposure to peanuts the finger for the cause of peanut allergies points to parents being over cautious. After all for years parents were told not to give young children peanuts (or any other nuts) to void choking and it is becoming obvious that this lack of exposure is the cause of the increased allergy levels.
