New research coming in from Holland shows that expectant mothers who
eat nuts (or nut products like peanut butter) daily during pregnancy
increase their children’s risk of developing asthma by more than 50
percent over women who rarely or never consume nut products during
their pregnancy.

“We were pretty surprised to see the adverse associations between
daily versus rare nut product consumption during pregnancy and
symptoms of asthma in children, because we haven’t seen this in
similar previous studies,” said the study’s lead author, Saskia M.
Willers, M.Sc.

The study appeared in the second July issue for July of the American
Thoracic Society’s "American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care
Medicine."

Maternal consumption of allergenic foods during pregnancy may increase
the risk that the fetuses they carry would become sensitized to
certain allergens. Research on the topic, however, has been
contradictory and often inconclusive.

Nearly 4,000 expectant mothers from the "Prevention and Incidence of
Asthma and Allergy Study" conducted by the Dutch government completed
a dietary questionnaire that asked how often they consumed vegetables,
fresh fruit, fish, eggs, milk, milk products, nuts and nut products
during the last month. Their children’s diets were also assessed at
two years of age, and their asthma and allergy symptoms were assessed
yearly until eight years of age. By the end of the eight years, the
researchers had complete data for 2,832 children and their mothers. As
studies like this go, this one is large and fairly comprehensive.

“The only consistent association between the maternal intake of the
investigated food groups during pregnancy and childhood asthma
symptoms until eight years of age that we found was with nut
products,” said the lead author. “Daily versus rare consumption of nut
products—which we assumed was largely peanut butter—was consistently
and positively associated with childhood asthma symptoms.”

The association remained even after controlling for the child’s diet.

Additionally, the authors noted, there was a small effect of daily
maternal fruit consumption during pregnancy on reducing the risk of
wheeze in children, but other factors such as health-consciousness and
consumption of prenatal vitamins may have been contributing factors in
ways that were undetectable in this study’s design. Still, this hints
to me of the overall value of fruit as a part of an overall healthy
nutrition program for women.

Dave

Full text article above extracted from http://shamvswham.blogspot.com/