Australian study finds no link between maternal egg and peanut intake and child allergy prevention

A comprehensive Australian study reveals that increasing egg and peanut consumption during pregnancy and breastfeeding does not reduce the risk of food allergies in children, challenging previous assumptions and advice.

Australian researchers have found no evidence that eating extra eggs and peanuts during pregnancy and breastfeeding lowers the chance that a child will later develop allergies to those foods, adding to a long-running debate over whether a mother’s diet can shape infant allergy risk.

The study followed 2,137 pregnant women whose babies were already considered more vulnerable because of a family history of allergic disease. One group ate at least six eggs and 60 peanuts a week from before 23 weeks of pregnancy until four months after birth, while the other ate no more than three eggs and 30 peanuts weekly. By the time the children were one year old, allergy rates were broadly the same in both groups, according to the report of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers found egg allergy in 6.2% of children in the higher-intake group, compared with 7.2% in the lower-intake group. Peanut allergy was recorded in 2.6% of children in each group. Overall food allergy also showed little difference, leading the team to conclude that deliberately increasing consumption of eggs and peanuts during pregnancy and lactation does not appear to prevent allergies in children.

The findings sit alongside earlier and more mixed evidence. A 2010 case-control study indexed by PubMed reported that higher maternal peanut consumption during pregnancy and breastfeeding was associated with a greater risk of peanut allergy in infants, while the U.S. National Institutes of Health has also supported clinical research to test whether maternal diets rich in peanuts and eggs might reduce early signs of food allergy. Taken together, the research suggests there is still no firm basis for advising expectant mothers to eat more of these foods solely to prevent allergy in their children.