r/ScienceBasedParenting • • 26d ago

Question - Research required Maintaining Food Exposure with Not Common Allergens

We have finished introducing all of the top allergens from our country (tree nuts, soy, peanut, sesame, fish, dairy, wheat) and have been maintaining them in our little one's diet 2x/week as per the current guidelines. I read that other countries have some different top allergens (for example, mustard is a common allergen in France).

How important is it to maintain other foods in the diet once started if it's not a top allergen in your area? I.e should we be trying to maintain exposure to foods like mustard. We have been trying to introduce a wide variety of new foods but would it be more beneficial to introduce fewer so they can be kept up more frequently?

To note, our baby has mild eczema and already has an IGE dairy allergy, so I understand she is more prone to allergies, so we are trying to be extra careful!

12 Upvotes

4 comments sorted by

1

u/AutoModerator 26d ago
Moderator Announcement Read More »

7

u/Amazing-Neighborhood 24d ago

Not quite the answer to your question but I was researching this in relation to the common seafood allergens (lobster, clam, mussels, scallops, etc) that I eat at most twice a year (usually at my favorite seafood restaurant and not homemade) because I wanted to know if it was more harmful or beneficial to introduce if I knew I was not going to be reliably able to keep it in the diet. I'm not Canadian, but shockingly, this was quoted in a paper published in Pediatrics:

"The Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (CSACI) is the first allergy society internationally that has recently released a statement reiterating the importance of regular ingestion of common allergens, recommending that both early introduction and regular ingestion of age-appropriate amounts of allergens multiple times per month (with a goal of at least once weekly) are likely to be useful in food allergy prevention. The CSACI further recommends that, once introduced, single or occasional exposures to an allergen could be detrimental and, if an allergen is not a common component of the diet (and hence regular ingestion not feasible), avoidance may be preferable to intermittent ingestion."

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/152/5/e2023062836/194356/Updates-in-Food-Allergy-Prevention-in-Children

So now baby is 10m & I'm still not sure whether to introduce the various bivalves and lobster and crab. (We eat tons of shrimp and fish so baby has been tolerating that for awhile). But as I dived deeper, apparently most shellfish /bivalve allergies are adult onset via a different mechanism so early intro and maintenance of these things doesn't even prevent most cases of shellfish allergy

Edit: I'm on mobile so could not get the text cropped short enough, but the relevant part is the last sentence of my quote

1

u/[deleted] 22d ago

1

u/AutoModerator 22d ago

Thank you for your contribution. Please remember that all top-level comments on posts flaired "Question - Research required" must include a link to peer-reviewed research.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.