GO NUTS!
Forget what you’ve been told. Let your babies eat peanuts — and milk and eggs — to prevent allergies later in life
IN late 2010, when England-based healthand-science writer Robin Nixon Pompa gave her then-4-month-old daughter, Clara, a tiny portion of her scrambled eggs, she never imagined what would happen next.
“Her whole face swelled up like a big red balloon,” recalls the author of the new book “AllergyFree Kids: The Science-Based Approach to Preventing Food Allergies” (William Morrow; out Tuesday). “I was terrified that her airways were constricting and she would go into anaphylactic shock.”
Mercifully, after calling the UK National Health Service’s emergency hotline, Pompa was told that an emergency room visit wasn’t necessary because Clara’s reaction was already starting to subside. However, in that scary moment, Clara joined the 6 million children in the US and 1 million in the UK diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies.
At first, Pompa was convinced that her daughter was going to lead a fearful life, eating a restricted diet. But a consultation with esteemed, pioneering physician Dr. Gideon Lack, professor of pediatric allergy at King’s College, London, changed her mind.
Contrary to the recommendations of some traditional allergists who advise avoidance of an allergen at all costs — or at least
until the immune system has supposedly matured — Pompa was instructed to feed Clara one-twentieth of an egg every day, gradually increasing the “dose” until she built up an immunity and was no longer allergic. Six years later, Clara is allergy-free. Pompa’s book comes at a time when there has been a revolution in the field of allergy prevention.
Last September, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that found introducing infants to peanuts or eggs at an early age was associated with a lower risk of developing allergies.
In January, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the National Institutes of Health, along with other organizations, reversed their advice on peanuts. Instead of introducing peanuts and other allergens after age 3, as the organizations previously advised, parents are now being told to begin feeding their kids small amounts of such foods in infancy in the hopes of reducing their risk for allergy.
The shift echoes a similar change of opinion regarding the diets of pregnant and breast-feeding women. Fifty years ago, moms-to-be and new mothers were told to avoid eating allergens. Now there are no mainstream recommendations against this.
“Initially, I was skeptical,” admits Pompa, a mother of three who moved to the UK from Brooklyn seven years ago because of her husband Will’s job. “I said to Dr. Lack: ‘You seriously want me to feed my daughter egg — the very thing that could harm her?’
“We debated for a while, but he argued his case so well, I put my trust 100 percent in him.”
Dr. Lack, regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on allergies, believes in building acceptance of allergens through repeated careful feedings. His ideas are being embraced by the international medical community.
In 2014, philanthropist Sean Parker invested $24 million in a new center at Stanford University led by immunology researcher Dr. Kari Nadeau, who is developing the first combination multifood-allergy therapy meant to desensitize babies to five different food allergens at a time.
The general consensus is that the immune system has a critical window in which it can be taught that allergens are not dangerous.
“It likely starts closing between 4 and 6 months [old] and is mostly, although not completely, shut by late childhood, possibly as early as 5 years old,” writes Pompa in her book.
She points out that some researchers hypothesize that for most kids, the window can be propped permanently open by repeated exposure to food allergens over the first five years of life.
According to Dr. Lack, the treatment isn’t one size fits all. For instance, he writes that babies with severe eczema “may require specialist advice before certain foods are introduced.”
His hypotheses are supported by two important studies that he headed. The February 2015 Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study found that the rate of peanut allergies in schoolchildren was 10 times higher in the UK than in Israel, where peanuts are one of the first weaning foods in infants’ diets, often introduced to babies as young as 4 months old.
Meanwhile, Lack’s March 2016 Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) research, which investigated more than 1,300 children, showed that the introduction of wheat, milk, egg, peanut, fish and sesame into the diets of normal, previously exclusively breast-fed infants at 3 months was associated with a staggering two-thirds reduction in the rate of allergies.
“It really is remarkable,” says Pompa. “But it’s important to remember there isn’t a cure for food allergies, and my book is, above all, about prevention.”
In Clara’s case, Pompa built up her resistance to eggs by serving her carefully measured portions of sponge cake.
In the second half of her book, she offers helpful tips and tricks to make allergens palatable — for instance, eggs served over-easy are usually a hit with kids. Plus, there are recipes such as tahini brownies, sesame fish fingers and maple-yogurt-marinated chicken.
All the dishes were tried and tested by Clara and her two brothers, 4-yearold Grady and Arthur, age 2. (Grady, who had previous allergic reactions to eggs, is also now allergy-free.)
“Funnily enough, they liked anything shaped like a stick,” says Pompa. “And I always give them a choice at the table. Anything to empower the toddler!”