The advice from nearly 25 from years ago to avoid giving peanut products to babies and toddlers turned out to be a little... nutty.
Remember those kids birthday parties where you had to be sooooo careful about serving your child’s friends anything containing peanuts? The allergies were real. The scientific advice to deal with allergens by total avoidance, it turns out, was wrong.
Around the turn of the century, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended delaying exposing babies and toddlers to peanut products. That advice turned out to be a little… nutty. Instead of a reduction in allergies, we saw an explosion. Time, and further studies, led science to change its view. In 2015, a study found that giving peanut products to children under three could actually REDUCE their chances of developing a peanut allergy. Allergies are real, no doubt, but researchers found that how the body adapts to the allergens is the key.
That was around the time Erica Bethe Levin was starting a family, and her pediatrician advised her to introduce her babies to peanuts, and all the suspected food allergens so that their bodies immune systems could figure out how to deal with them. Just this fall, a study published in the journal Pediatrics, validated what her doctor’s advice, not just for peanuts, but other food allergens, too.
She tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that as she tried to implement her doctor’s directions, she found it impossible to buy baby food that embraced the science. So, in her Lincoln Park kitchen, she started her own company: GloBowl, which she describes as “internationally-inspired baby and toddler meals for future foodies.” She found a market, with hundreds of thousands of jars of Globowl baby food sold nationwide. “We started with Pad Thai for Tots, Veggie Tikka Masala, Baby Spices Bean Bowl, kind of like a chili, and Yaya’s Medi-Bowl. We’ve also added Mini-Strone, and Baby Bibimpbap.”
“It’s time to follow what the doctors are recommending, follow the science. Science is ever changing and that’s OK. It’s because we learn more and more as we go, and now that we know this, I think it’s our duty to do better for our children and Globowl is trying to lead the way in that regard.”
Globowl is sold on line: Amazon, Thrive Market, and Globowl.com, with a TikTok shop coming soon.
