Nutrition Nugget: Food Allergy Prevention

[00:00:20] Brandy: I'm having salad with a side of fries

[00:00:27] So the Salk Institute for Biological Studies reached out to me with their recent research about potentially preventing food allergies. Now, curiosity kills the cat, right? I was curious, I was intrigued. So I spoke to one of the two researchers who conducted the study, and she said that, like, what prompted her to do the study was their interest in how diet impacts health.

[00:01:03] Brandy: It's, like, delicious just how that all came together .

[00:01:23] So they were trying to determine how does the body know whether to accept or reject a food. Like, how does it know when to react or when to stay calm when we eat things? And then they wondered which specific foods are involved. Like, and then which immune cells are doing this work. So this was a study on mice.

[00:02:23] So in the chow that had a mix of things, the epitopes were in corn, wheat, and soybeans, so all plant seed proteins. So they zeroed in on the corn specifically because it's not a huge allergy for people, and so it allowed them to see essentially, like, what's the non-issue there, right? So they used this special little tiny tracking tool that could identify and follow only this, like, immune cell to see how it [00:03:00] responded to the corn protein.

[00:03:29] And then they're either working to reduce the inflammation or sustain an absence of inflammation. So kind of making sense of this. Like I said, the proteins were found in corn, wheat, and soybeans, and they believe that this whole thing can inform future immunotherapies and maybe even prevent or treat allergies, food allergies specifically.

[00:04:22] And I don't know, I think this is certainly interesting as far as like medical or scientific application of research that may help a ton of people, especially kids. So according to their data, 6% of young adults and 3 to 4% of adults live with food allergies, and there's little to really in terms of treatment options to help those people manage this immune response.

[00:05:12] So the researcher said to me that if you have kids, maybe it makes sense to have them eat some of the major allergens early so that we're helping the body's own immune system acclimate to these foods so that like eggs, soy, wheat, peanuts Certainly speak to an allergist, talk to an allergist. I think if you have allergies, like, you know, you have an allergist or someone on your care team or a physician, like ask them about this study.

[00:06:04] So Brandy, thoughts?

[00:06:12] Jenn Trepeck: as someone

[00:06:24] And yeah, curious to see where we end up.

[00:06:32] Brandy: Okay.

[00:06:45] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, it just reminds me, like everything about the human body is an absolute miracle.

[00:06:51] Jenn Trepeck: Well, there you have it. That's the latest from the Salk Institute on food allergy prevention. Well, as always, [00:07:00] everybody, I'm Jenn Trepeck. Connect with me on all social media. I'm @jenntrepeck, J-E-N-N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K.

[00:07:14] Brandy: Thanks for having me. This is always fun to be here with you talking wellness, so thanks for the invite.

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