One gets a allergic reaction of the smell of peanut butter, the other eats it every day: peanut butter. We got sent this set of peanut butters to test, no peanut allergy here at home. Our favorite? Chili and lemongrass!
But during this taste feast we thought that it would be helpful for you to share how introducing peanuts in small children can best be addressed. Continue reading…
When do you start giving peanut?
It was dominating the news over the last few months in Europe, and now also surfaced in the US: Give your child as early as possible peanuts (and egg). Not a whole peanut, of course, but a little bit of peanut butter has been proven helpful to develop a tolerance to peanuts.
How do you start?
First, talk with your pediatrician or allergist if your baby has major eczema, or if there is a great risk that your child has peanut allergy. If not the case, then start with the first step when your baby is between 4 to 8 months.
Create a peanut test jar
You start with two days in six ascending steps to give peanuts. For this step you use peanut butter in baby food of your own choice. You can use formula or breast milk, even a jar of baby food will do. Stir the peanut butter into 100 gram infant formula to create an equal mixture. Don’t give this jar in one go, but go through the six stages spread over two days. Take a minimum interval of one hour between steps. Stop if you see reactions during that hour; if there are no complaints, you can proceed to the next step.
Jar Test Day 1 :
1 teaspoon peanut butter mix with 100 ml baby food.
Then you give, at intervals of at least 1 hour:
1/2 teaspoon of the mixture in the jar
2 teaspoons of the mixture in the jar
1 tablespoon of the mixture in the jar
3 tablespoons of the mixture in the jar
Jar Test Day 2:
mix 1 tablespoon of peanut butter with 100 ml baby food.
Then you give, at intervals of at least 1 hour:
2 tablespoons of the mixture in the jar
4 tablespoons of the mixture in the game
If the six steps are completed without problems, then your baby ate 19 peanuts and has no peanut allergy. Hurray! To maintain this tolerance level, it is important to eat at least 10 grams of peanut butter every week. This is equivalent to three teaspoons of peanut butter, which can be mixed with infant formula or put on a slice of bread. More or often giving peanut butter is also fine.
DAVO Dietitians and NVKA
This scheme was developed by a collaboration between the Section Kinderallergologie of the Dutch Pediatric Association (NVK) and Dietitians Alliance Food Hypersensitivity(DAVO), with the support of the working recipe food challenges of the Dutch Society for Allergology (NVvA).
Background allergy studies
Find out more on the LEAP study:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850
The PETIT study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27939035
The EAT study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4852987/
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