Response from: Dan

Ruth, I share your reservations about this. I'm very eager to see the report in full, but based solely on what the newspapers say about the report, this looks like awfully sloppy "science". According to what I've read, the committee is basing its recommendation on two things: 1) "...studies showing that allergy rates are low, or non-existent, in countries where babies are weaned on peanuts," and 2) an increasing rate of peanut allergies in the U.K. One major omission (in the article, at least) is that the countries with low peanut allergy rates are all in Asia and Africa, and that these countries by and large -- with the possible exception of Israel, which I'm not sure about -- have lower overall allergy rates than Western countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. This, of course, is the basis of the "hygiene hypothesis." While the hygiene hypothesis is not proven, the statistics behind it are very real. Making conclusions specifically about peanut allergy based on statistical comparisons to countries with much lower overall allergy rates, if indeed that's all the report is doing, is the type of rigorous scientific analysis characteristic of a third grade science report. Is it possible that these researchers are unfamiliar with exogenous variables? I did a bit of research on the studies that will likely be cited, and I've posted a substantially larger response to this article in the forums at WEGO Health. Here's a direct link to my comments, for anybody who's interested: http://forums.wegohealth.com/forums/viewthread/112_25/#619
Importantly, though, while avoiding consumption of peanuts during pregnancy hasn't been proven to reduce the risk of peanut allergy, I think suddenly reversing this recommendation on what appears to be very shaky evidence is way off base. From what I understand, they're getting kind of desperate about allergies in Britain.