Oct 29, 2007 11:09 pm US/Central
Good Question: Are Allergies Now Worse For Kids?
(WCCO)
This Halloween, the scariest thing put in some of our kid's candy is not hidden at all. It's a major ingredient called peanuts. About 11 million Americans now have food allergies and between 1997 and 2002, peanut allergies in young kids doubled.
"Why that's occurred we don't know," said Dr. Ted Labuza, who studies food science at the University of Minnesota. "What we do know is that it's an immune response and it's genetic. If both parents have an allergy your chances of having an allergy is about 40 percent to 45 percent."
The eight major food allergens that now need to be labeled in the U.S. are milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans.
"Cause the body sees this as a foreign protein going to attack the cells and reacts," said Labuza.
Some of the rise in food allergies is better and earlier detection, but why is something like the peanut suddenly such a problem?
"The peanut has not changed," said Labuza.
However, researchers say we have and the problem may be that we're too clean.
It's called the "Hygiene Hypothesis." Antibiotics and sanitizers protect our immune systems but without anything to fight, our bodies are making up enemies like the peanut.
"Whether they are all full blown allergies that could cause death, we don't know that yet," said Labuza.
In fact, while 25 percent of parents think their kids have food allergies, only about 8 percent actually do.
A child's allergies may also depend on how they were born. C-sections are up 40 percent in the past ten years. Some researchers think kids born that way are not exposed to healthy bacteria in the birth canal, so they're more sensitive to allergens later in life.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
