"When babies eat certain foods early in lifethe kinds so many end up allergic to like eggs and peanutstheyre less likely to develop allergies to those foods later on finds a new analysis httpjama.jamanetwork.comarticle.aspxdoi.jama.. published in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA. This is relatively new thinking. Not so long ago in  the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that allergenic foods be kept away from infants until they were at least a year old and often older. That warning was especially strong for those with a family history of allergies. But as an editorial published in the same issue of JAMA points out in the next decade food allergy prevalence nearly doubled in the United States. That advice has been amended and newer evidence has shown that introducing foods earlier is actually better for preventing food allergies. The authors of the justpublished study reviewed all of the available evidence on the topic and included  studies in their final analysis. They found evidence of moderate certainty that introducing peanuts early between ages  and  months is linked to a reduction in the risk of developing a peanut allergy. Eggs too showed this association when they were introduced between ages  and  months. Early introduction of another common allergen fish was also linked to less allergypossibly due to the antiinflammatory effects of omegasthough evidence for this link wasnt as certain. Early introduction didnt seem to make a difference for autoimmune diseases at least according to the available evidence eating gluten young wasnt associated with the risk of developing celiac disease. Exactly why is a question researchers are still exploring. It is not clear that it is the specific early introduction of an allergenic food that renders immunological protection rather than the accompanying increased diversity in the diet that occurs as a byproduct writes Dr. Matthew Greenhawt an allergy and immunology specialist at Childrens Hospital Colorado in the accompanying editorial. More research is necessary to figure out the ideal amounts of these allergens the optimum times of introduction and the reasons behind the link."