Last week’s menu spotlight touched on the prevalence of the peanut allergies among children. In an effort to combat the likelihood of our little Ella developing this burdensome allergy, we asked our pediatrician when and how we should introduce her to peanuts.

Shannon and I were already aware that recent research suggest exposing certain children at a younger age to peanut products could reduce the chance of them developing the allergy, but we wanted to get the OK from Ella’s doctor before going off and feeding her spoonfuls of peanut butter. Thankfully at her 6 month check up, the pediatrician told us we could start introducing peanut products at anytime and suggested a specific type of food.

She suggested using Bamba peanut snacks as the peanut introduction vehicle. They only have 4 ingredients, 1 gram of sugar per serving and are composed primarily of peanut paste. They do contain a fair amount of refined grains (corn to be specific) so once we determine if Ella can tolerate peanuts, we’ll most likely start giving her more wholesome  foods that contain the faux nut.