I read a similar article when I was pg with my DD all it did was make me eat peanut butter. Never ate the stuff again until this pg and I have it all the time on toast. DD has no issues eating it.
Each to there own but it's not 'advice' I have followed but we also do t have any history of allergies.
Oh gosh, now I'm a bit worried. I'm vegetarian and I've been eating a handful of mixed nuts on most days for protein and most of the nuts are peanuts in the mix. Perhaps I should switch to some other nuts. I'm already coeliac and have a risk of passing that one onto my bub.
FWIW, I was listening to something on the radio while pregnant with one of the other two, and it was talking about how smoking (I think) when pregnant could affect the child of the foetus.... ie the pregnant woman's grandchild. Of course I'm not saying smoking is advisable, all I'm saying is: sometimes more knowledge is not helpful - even if you do all the 'right' things (and remember, that changes all the time!!), it might be something your mother did which will affect your baby, nothing you can do about that! AARGH! Best not to reproduce at all, I think, and shut yourself in a cupboard.
As others have pointed out, there are so many variables, and you just don't know what is going to happen once your baby is on the outside. We all worry about our children having a life-threatening allergy or illness, but as others have pointed out, even within the same family where there are histories of allergies, some have them and some don't. My cousin's wife is allergic to nuts but her son is fine - and obviously she didn't have any during her pregnancy. It's all a bit of a lottery...
Ok, this is my own personal theory. I have no research to back this up....
I don't think it is exposure to peanuts themselves that initially cause the allergy, but to something that is very similar to peanuts, like a chemical or a virus or bacteria that has a protein on it that is similar to peanuts. After all, that is theory behind how some auto-immune disorders, including diabetes, are caused. If it was just to the nut then why are peanut allergies in african tribes where peanuts are a staple part of the diet, rare? It might explain the rise in allergies since our diet became very processed.
Now for my rant....
We haven't changed very much since the middle ages when mothers were blamed for everything that went wrong during pregnancy (including giving birth to girls!) Except then it was blamed on bad spirits, thoughts, and imbalance of humours. Now it is because our diets are wrong. If your child is obese, it's your fault. If your child, grandchildren, great grandchildren have high blood pressure, it's your fault. If they have diabetes, your fault again. And allergies??? Absolutely your fault. I think we have to realise, as a society, that some things we just can't control, and nature controls everything eventually.
On that - DH's gastroenterologist has said there's interesting stuff coming out about nut allergies (and coeliac disease and other IBDs) that suggests that the same part of the immune system that causes them is the one that used to deal with intestinal parasites like worms and nasty bacteria. Because of our love affair with triclosan and other antibacterials, these have been wiped out, but that part of the immune system remains. It's effectively sitting around bored, so starts to attack what it decides are foreign proteins, and this frequently happens to be nuts, eggs and shellfish. And THAT'S why it didn't occur in our generations - we weren't as obsessively clean.
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