60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds

One of the difficult parts of this advice for me was that my daughter wasn't eating food at the time when we were supposed to introduce it. In those cases, you're supposed to add peanut butter to the milk, which we did a few times. We let it slip for a few weeks, because it was one more thing in a pile of many things. We got her back eating peanut butter once she started eating food, but it was too late. She had developed a peanut allergy.

After going through the desensitization program at an allergist, we're on a maintenance routine of two peanuts a day. It's like pulling teeth to get her to eat them. She hates peanut M&Ms, hates salted peanuts, hates honey rusted peanuts, hates plain peanuts, hates chocolate covered peanuts, hates peanut butter cookies, and will only eat six Bamba sticks if we spend 30 minutes making a game out of it.

I highly recommend being very rigorous about giving them the peanut exposure every single day. It would have saved us a lot of time.

My daughter was in the original study, back in 2012. It was very interesting, but a lot of work. She was randomised into the early introduction arm, so she had a whole load of allergens that she had to eat regularly. iirc, as well as peanuts it was egg, sesame, white fish, milk and wheat. There were several trips to London for lots of tests.

By the time my second daughter was born in 2014 they'd told us some of the preliminary results, so we followed the guidance even though she wasn't in the trial – no peanuts in the house so she couldn't get any on her skin until she was able to eat solids, and then peanut butter was her first solid food and we fed it to her throughout her infancy. I don't know if that's the cause, but she still eats it by the bucketload.