Casting doubts on government health recommendations that infants and new mothers should avoid eating peanuts, a new study says that eating peanuts early in life may help to avoid developing peanut allergy.

In their study, the researchers looked at the occurrence of peanut allergy in 8,600 Jewish school-age children in Israel and the UK. Then they analyzed data on peanut consumption by infants ages four to 24 months.

The researchers found that the prevalence of peanut allergy among the U.K students was 1.85 percent while it was 0.17 percent among the Israeli children. The researchers also found that almost 69 percent Israeli children started eating peanuts at nine months of age while these rates were only 10 percent among the British children.

breast-feeding, infants, peanut allergy, peanuts, Pregnancy

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