Community Magazine March 2014

To • • Health EATING NUTS DURING PREGNANCYMIGHT PREVENT KIDS’ ALLERGIES Women who eat nuts during pregnancy – and who aren’t allergic themselves – are less likely to have kids with nut allergies, a new study suggests. Dr. Michael Young, an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues, collected data on more than 8,200 children of mothers who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study II. The researchers found that mothers who ate the most peanuts or tree nuts during pregnancy – five times a week or more – had the lowest risk of their child developing an allergy to these nuts. The rate of U.S. children allergic to peanuts more than tripled from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 1.4 percent in 2010, according to background information included in the study. Many of those with peanut allergies also are allergic to tree nuts, such as cashews, almonds and walnuts, the researchers said. “Food allergies have become epidemic,” said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Our own studies show that eight percent of kids in the United States have a food allergy – that’s one in 13, about two in every classroom,” said Gupta. The new findings do not demonstrate or prove a cause-and-effect relationship between women eating nuts during pregnancy and lower allergy risk in their children, Young said. The findings do, however, add to the growing evidence that early introduction of foods increases the development of tolerance and reduces the risk of allergies. This study suggests that exposure to nuts early in life might protect kids from developing an allergy to them – a theory that also has been linked to other foods to which kids are commonly allergic, Gupta said. SODAMAY WORSEN KNEE OSTEOARTHRITIS INMEN Men with osteoarthritis of the knee may want to avoid sugar-packed soft drinks. That’s the advice given by researchers who found that drinking sugary soda is associated with progression of the disease in men. No such link was found in women. Over 2,000 patients with knee osteoarthritis participated in the study. Osteoarthritis is the wearing of cartilage in a joint. The function of cartilage is to reduce friction in the joints and serve as a “shock absorber,” and its wearing leads to pain and other symptoms. “Our main finding is that in general, the more sugary soda men drink, the greater the risk that knee osteoarthritis will get worse,” says researcher Bing Lu, MD, DrPh, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Excess weight and obesity are a known risk factor for knee osteoarthritis, but according to Lu, the researchers were surprised to find that the link between knee osteoarthritis and sugary soft drinks could not solely be explained by weight. “We very carefully [took into account] weight in the statistical analysis,” Lu explained. “We controlled not only for the general categories of overweight and obesity, but also for patients’ specific body-mass indices, or BMIs.” When the men were divided into groups of obese and non-obese, the link between sugary drinks and increased knee damage held true only in the non-obese men. This suggests that soft drinks exacerbate knee osteoarthritis independently of the wear and tear on the joints caused by carrying around excess weight, Lu says. PEERPRESSURE MAY INFLUENCE YOUR FOODCHOICES Peer pressure might play a part in what you eat and how much you eat, a new review suggests. “The evidence reviewed here is consistent with the idea that eating behaviors can be transmitted socially,” said lead investigator Eric Robinson of the University of Liverpool, in a journal news release. “Taking these points into consideration, the findings of the present review may have implications for the development of more effective public-health campaigns to promote healthy eating.” In conducting the review, the researchers analyzed 15 studies published in 11 different journals. Eight of these analyzed how people’s food choices are affected by information on eating norms, and the other seven focused on the effects of these norms on people’s eating choices. Those who were told that other people were making low-calorie or high-calorie food choices weremuch likelier tomake the same choices themselves. The review also revealed that social norms affect the quantities of food people eat. People who are told that others are eating large quantities of food are more likely to eat more. The researchers said people’s food choices are clearly linked to their social identity. “It appears that in some contexts, conforming to informational eating norms may be a way of reinforcing identity to a social group,” Robinson said. The researchers said the influence is present even if people are not aware of the association, or they are eating alone. 86 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE