Peanut Butter for Your Little Peanut
For quite some time, it has been common practice to avoid giving a baby peanut butter until the baby is at least one year. This was put into place because in the event that the child did have a peanut allergy, they would be more likely to survive after 1 year. Interestingly enough, since that recommendation has been implemented, there has appeared to be a staggering rise in the amount of peanut allergies in America. These days, it seems like “peanut” is a curse word. Today, hundreds of pre-schools, mommy-and-me classes, and other kid zones are deemed nut-free, and particularly peanut-free, due to this insane rise in deathly allergies.
When we look at other countries such as Israel, however, peanut allergies are far less prominent. Researchers believe that this may be because often when babies in Israel transition off of formula or breast milk to solid foods, they usually begin with a wildly popular peanut snack. This little snack melts in their little mouths, and is filled with peanut-buttery goodness. This observation inspired the quest to see if this early exposure to peanut butter really can help prevent an allergy in the future. When they finally put it to the test, they seemed to hit the nail on the head!
There has been overwhelming research that suggests that an early and well-monitored exposure to peanut butter in infants may actually prevent a peanut allergy altogether. For example, a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine (Du Toit et al., 2016) completed a randomized trial and found that the early introduction of peanuts in infants at high risk for allergy was shown to prevent peanut allergy. They also found that children who had continued exposure to peanut butter until age 5, could then go over 12 months without peanut butter, and still not experience an allergy. This means that after periodic exposure to peanut butter throughout the first five years of life, these children were pretty much considered immune to a peanut allergy.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) actually suggests that, depending on the health of the infant and how high risk the infant is for having a peanut allergy, it is a good idea to start giving your baby peanut butter as early as 4-6 months (when they would usually start on solid foods). This of course must be carefully discussed with your pediatrician, and done in a very calculated manner. Your pediatrician will let you know how much peanut butter to start off with, and will work with you on how to continue from there. You will probably find that your pediatrician will suggest this to you anyway, but if he/she does not, then it is definitely worth bringing up!
Add some creamy, organic, raw, peanut butter to sweet potatoes, bananas, berries, or really any food that your babba enjoys! Have fun with it, and your babba will too! Be sure to stay away from the crunchy kind as your babba likely does not have the teeth to chew it just yet! Also please make sure to consult your doctor before taking these sorts of steps. As they get older, you can also give them some sliced apples with some peanut butter, or do the age old snack “ants on a log”, where you take some gorgeous celery, put peanut butter in the middle and add some raisins as the “ants”
*This research may also hold true for other allergens such as eggs, milk, and soy, so if you would like to include these foods in your child’s diet, then talk to your doctor about completing the same process for those!
Here are some Cha Cha-approved ways to start exposing your baby to peanut butter!
