The UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SCAN), which advises Public Health England and the NHS, is now conducting its own review of official advice on nuts and eggs to try to provide definitive guidance on the issue.
Details of the SCAN research are expected by the end of this year and the review will focus on the benefits of integrating peanuts and eggs into a mother’s diet during breastfeeding. The study is entitled “Feeding in the First Year of Life.”
Breastfeeding has long been known to have major advantages over artificial formula but new research shows an extra benefit – mothers who eat peanuts during lactation can help their children to avoid nut allergies later in life.
Researchers in Canada found that children were five times less likely to develop an allergy if their mothers had eaten nuts before weaning and if they were introduced to eating nuts before they reached the age of one.
New evidence about the benefits of breastfeeding could help the NHS to fight the critically low level of breastfeeding in the UK. Breastfeeding rates for one-year-olds in the UK are the lowest in the world. And while the World Health Organisation advises that babies should be exclusively breastfed to six months, that happens with only 1% of babies in the UK.
Rates of peanut allergy have risen in recent decades and one in 50 school-age children in the UK is now affected by the condition. Yet nut allergies are rare in Mediterranean countries where children are exposed from infancy.
The number of sufferers in the UK is now increasing by 5% each year. In 2011-2012 there were 18,471 hospital admissions for allergies in England but that had grown to 25,093 by 2015-2016, and the number of cases of life-threatening anaphylactic shock has risen six-fold in 20 years.
Allergy Epidemic
The Canadian study was carried out by a research team based at Humber River Hospital in Ontario. Dr Tracy Pitt, the lead author of the report said the results were clear. “We found that introduction of peanut before 12 months of age was associated with a reduced risk of peanut sensitisation by school age, particularly among children whose mothers consumed peanuts while breastfeeding,” she said.
The results added to emerging evidence “that early peanut consumption during infancy can reduce the risk of peanut sensitisation later in childhood.”
“This risk could be further reduced in breastfed infants by encouraging maternal consumption of peanuts during lactation,” she said. “Both passive peanut exposure through breast milk and peanut introduction in the first year of life may decrease peanut sensitisation at age seven.”
The US National Institute of Health updated its own guidelines in January, saying that infants should be exposed to peanut-containing food from as early as four months to desensitise their immune system. However the new study suggests that mothers could begin building tolerance before their children are born. Researchers tracked 342 children from birth to the age of seven to see if they developed a peanut allergy.
Where mothers had eaten peanuts during breastfeeding and introduced nuts before 12 months, just 1.7% of children developed an allergy, compared to the overall incidence of 9.4%. The study concluded that the dual effect of breastfeeding and early introduction was the most beneficial for youngsters.
Current NHS weaning guidance suggests that parents should offer nut-based food from the age of six months to see if children are allergic but does not recommend keeping up the exposure. Public Health England has warned that until UK guidelines are changed parents should stick to the current NHS advice and never feed whole nuts to under-fives as they could be a choking hazard.
by Bob Graham
The post NHS: Breastfeeding Research Showing Dramatic Benefits appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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