Maternal Diet and Allergies

Filed in archive Baby Gear , Pregnancy and Nutrition on November 20, 2007

Your diet and eating habits during pregnancy may have long-lasting impacts on your child's health. By long-lasting, I mean refer to that may be manifested well into your child's adulthood. There have been numerous studies on what is termed as "fetal programming", supporting the theory that the conditions inside the womb can have a vast impact on a child's later risks of developing certain chronic diseases. But to date there are still inconclusive data on whether eating peanuts or other tree nuts during pregnancy, for example, can affect a child's risks of developing food allergies later on.

The popular advise to pregnant women, particularly those who themselves or whose partners have allergies, is to avoid eating peanuts and tree nuts during pregnancy. This is supposed to reduce the child's risk of developing allergies, although it does not necessarily guarantee, of course, that the child will be allergy free. I, for example, have been very diligent in avoiding peanuts during my first pregnancy, but my son stil turned out to have multiple food allergies, as well as atopic eczema and hay fever. Oh well, genetics was probably a stronger determinant in our case.

For more on allergies, do check out the Allergizer.