All Kids Should Try Peanuts To Avoid Developing An Allergy, New Guidelines Say

Peanut allergies are on the rise. Scientists say that if parents want to prevent their children from growing up with deadly intolerances to a common food,  then they should expose their kids to peanuts early and often. We actually already knew this, thanks to scientific study published last year, but now the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is officially touting this advice.

"Many, many people were asking their doctors, their pediatricians, 'We've heard about this wonderful information; what should we do?'" Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN. "The professional societies — such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, etc. — all decided they needed to get together and sit down in a few meetings and put together some guidelines."

The advice to expose infants as young as four months old to food containing peanuts has been published in the new Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy in the United States.

"We actually want all children to have peanut introduced," Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, an allergy specialist at Children's Hospital of Colorado, told NBC News.