Peanut allergies are severe, and approximately 80 percent of affected children fail to outgrow them. For decades, experts have recommended that parents avoid feeding peanut products to infants to prevent the allergy from developing. Then in 2015, a study in The New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that early introduction of peanut products—at between 4 and 11 months of age—significantly decreased the development of peanut allergies among children at high risk for the allergy. Following this study, early introduction of peanut products has become a standard practice to build immune tolerance.

A new study published in the journal Pediatrics looked at how the implementation of the 2015 recommendations affected the peanut allergy rate. Researchers discovered that the overall food allergy rate in children under 3 dropped to 0.93 percent between 2017 and 2020 from 1.46 percent between 2012 and 2015. This 36 percent decrease in the overall rate was driven by a 43 percent drop in peanut allergies, confirming the benefit of the 2015 public health recommendation.