5 of 50 Baby Steps- Peanut Butter

PEA-NUT… PEA-NUT Butter… Jelly! I love that song! My Aunt Kathy taught it to my son recently and some days we just can’t get it out of our heads!

How much MORE American can you get…than the PB&J?? So it will be no suprise when you see what I discovered for these next 2 babysteps… lots of hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and an artificial color or two!

Of all the food allergies and intolerances in our house…peanut allergy has not been one of them…at least in the traditional anaphylactic, IgE sense of the word. Though it is no secret that this food and allergic response to it have exponentially increased in the last decade, especially in young children. It is estimated that 1.2% of america’s children are allergic to peanuts. Also

The reported rate of peanut allergy in children more than tripled from 1997 to 2008, according to survey results published in the latest issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

I recently came across a blog post a few months ago that explained a potential  hypothesis for why these peanut allergies may be going “through the roof”. You can read the entire article here:  http://ddrblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/peanut-allergy-epidemic-what-everyone-needs-to-know/

In a nutshell- the article shows a link between peanut oil being used in vaccines in recent years and peanut allergies… does it explain everything…NO (especially if you have a peanut allergic child who has not been vaccinated), but could it be a contributor? Possibly. Just as could this hypothesis that peanut allergy increase may be due in part to the genetic modification of soy as is outlined here on the organicconsumers.org article:

Soy linked to peanut  allergies
There is at least one protein in natural soybeans that has  cross-reactivity with peanut allergies.[10] That means that for some people who  are allergic to peanuts, consuming soybeans may trigger a reaction. While it is certainly possible that the unpredicted side effects from genetic engineering soybeans might increase the incidence of this cross-reactivity, it is unlikely  that any research has been conducted to investigate this. GM soy was introduced  into the US food supply in late 1996. We are left only to wonder whether this had an influence on the doubling of US peanut allergies from 1997 to  2002.

Ok…so back to PEANUT BUTTER… YES, we still eat it in our house, but we also now rotate it with another product called SUNBUTTER (sunflower seed butter)…which is able to be used a few days a week in our planet box because it is PEANUT-ALLERGY-FRIENDLY and compliant with our PEANUT FREE school campus. So our first babystep was to buy a PB that was HYDROGENATED OIL FREE and HFCS FREE (you could go one step further and buy Organic or grind your own from organic peanuts) and our second babystep was to add into the rotation SUNBUTTER for some variety and so that PB&J could still be packed for lunch (or in our case SunButter and hold the jelly…and now we are working on babystepping to gluten free bread (more on that later)!) 🙂 Happy Spreading!