When it comes to eggs, letting the babies enjoy a teaspoon at the age of 4 or 6 months indicates a reduction in allergy levels by 46 percent. This is suggested to be better than waiting for to do so later on in their lives. With peanuts, infants tasting it at 4 months to 11 months were linked with a 71 percent reduction in the development of allergies.

Dr. Robert Boyle said that the suggestion posted by these findings is that eggs and peanut should be among the first foods a baby encounters. He is from Imperial College London where he works as a pediatric allergy researcher. He did not shy away from adding that most doctors wouldn’t recommend this.

Doctors have shifted the kind of feeding guidelines they give to parents. These days the recently delivered mother is advised to keep their children off from food until they are 2 or 3 years old. However, even most of these recommendations attempt not encourage mothers to feed their children with eggs and peanuts in their early lives.

Boyle said that the infant feeding advice needs some adjustments.

How was the study done?

In order to have a glimpse of how baby food timing impacts their allergic reaction, Boyle and his team analyzed 146 published studies of the past 70 years.

In an outcome where 5.4 percent of the population had an allergic reaction, introducing eggs earlier would have limited the allergies of 24 children in every 1000. The participants involved in the study were 1,915.

For peanuts, 2.5 percent of the population had an allergic reaction; introducing peanuts earlier would have limited the allergies of 18 children in every 1000. This case found 1,550 participants.

The researchers were not able to get sufficient evidence that would prove early introduction of fish lowers general allergies and nasal allergies in particular.

They also widened the study so as to see whether early introduction of gluten, barley and rye might trigger higher chances of celiac disease. This is an autoimmune disorder interferes with nutrient absorption into the body by damaging the small intestine.

The finding was that gluten timing had zero impact on the possibilities of a baby developing celiac disease.

In addition, researchers found no evidence that the timing of introduction of allergenic foods like eggs, peanuts and fish influenced the odds of developing other autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes.

The study Limitation

One of the impeding factors of the analysis is that the study done on individuals had different designs and populations. This raised the challenge of drawing broad conclusions applicable to all children.

In most cases, baby feeding programs recommend that the first six months should be pure breastfeeding. However, very few women follow the guidelines. Introduction of solid food is usually done by even those who have stopped the breastfeeding directive.