Pregnant Moms: You Can Eat Nuts After All

Munching on nuts during pregnancy: a benefit or a hazard? Contradicting an earlier study, researchers say that nut-eating while pregnant lowers the chance of the child developing a peanut or tree-nut allergy, Huffington Post reports. Researchers compared data on more than 8,200 children with their mothers' diets, and found that women who consumed nuts at least five times weekly during pregnancy had children with a lower allergy risk. That's only for mothers who don't have nut allergies themselves, of course.

And the connection isn't clear, even if the data is. Maybe the nuts "prime" a baby's body to accept certain foods, or non-allergic mothers just tend to have non-allergic babies, says pregnancy expert Loralei Thornburg. Bottom line: "If you're a nut person, I would not avoid nuts during your pregnancy because of fear that it would induce an allergy in your child," adds Thornburg. The new research, published today in an academic journal, contradicts a British study from the 1990s that came to the exact opposite conclusion. (More peanut allergy stories.)