Eating Nuts During Pregnancy Doesn't Trigger Allergies in Babies, New Study Suggests

Mothers who eat nuts during pregnancy don't necessarily need to worry about triggering nut allergies in their children, according to a new study.

As long as the mother carrying the child doesn't have a nut allergy herself, the study's senior author Dr. Michael Young said that moms shouldn't be wary of causing allergies for their babies if they consume nuts.

Young told NBC that women who ate nuts at least five times a month throughout their pregnancy gave birth to children who had noticeably lower risk of nut allergies against those whose mothers steered clear of cashews and peanuts.

"The take-home message is that the previous concerns or fears of the ingestion of nuts during pregnancy causing subsequent peanut or nut allergy is really unfounded," Young stated.

A team of researchers and scientists studied a group of 8,205 mothers who were not allergic to nuts, in addition to their kids born between 1990 and 1994. 140 cases of peanut or tree allergies were found in this sample, the New York Times reported. Mothers who ate nuts during pregnancy were found to be 70 percent less likely to give birth to a child with a nut allergy when compared to those who ate nuts less than once a month.

"We showed an association between diet and allergy," Young, who works as an attending physician in allergy and immunology at Boston Children's Hospital, told the Times. "But not cause and effect."

The study, which was published in JAMA Pediatrics this week, acknowledged plenty of room for error in the findings, including dietary differences and familial allergy history.

Despite that, Young said, "Previously, women were concerned that eating nuts during pregnancy probably would lead to an allergic baby, but our data dispels that. A woman who is pregnant can eat peanuts without fear that she will have a baby allergic to peanuts."