Recent research has found that eating nut products during pregnancy raises the odds of having a child with asthma symptoms by nearly 50 percent.
The study, done by Dutch Researchers, was published in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In their study, more than 4,000 pregnant women completed a dietary questionnaire that asked whether they consumed vegetables, fresh fruit, fish, eggs, milk, milk products, nuts and nut products rarely, regularly or daily. Researchers then assessed the children's diets and looked to see who had developed asthma over an eight-year period.
Children whose mothers ate as little as one peanut butter sandwich a day had a far higher risk of asthma, according to the research results.
Daily consumption of nut products increased the odds that a child would have wheezing by 42 percent, shortness of breath by 58 percent and steroid use to ease asthma symptoms by 62 percent, compared to children born to mothers who rarely consumed nuts. Overall, the odds of developing asthma symptoms for a child whose mother ate nuts daily were 47 percent higher, according to the study. Now those are numbers worth paying attention to.
The study seems to suggest that eating nuts or nut products everyday while pregnant is the problem, not moderate consumption of nut products.
But even so, if you are pregnant, and especially if your family has any history of allergies to nuts and nut products, it could be best to avoid nuts completely. Read the complete article about avoiding nuts when pregnant in full, and always check with your doctor about your diet while pregnant.