A long-term cohort study of children now aged six years is finding that maternal diet has large impacts on food allergy as children grow.
The European study is ongoing and stared with 12,000 children born six years ago from Iceland to Greece and has been following their diets and allergies since.
Compared to the United Kingdom and Israel, where children often eat nuts at an earlier age, fewer nut allergies are apparent in those countries versus the cohort being studied.
The goal of the long-term project is to produce risk models to enable food manufacturers and medical professionals to create protocols for food service and allergen avoidance or prevention.
Yet it should be noted that while this study seems to be reinforcing the link between allergies and maternal and early life diets, there is still no proven link nor are there viable biomarkers for most allergies.