Did you know that sesame allergy is on the rise?
It is now the 9th most common food allergen in the U.S, and has been added to the list
of common allergenic foods.
In this video I’m going to talk about the safe ways to offer this potentially allergenic
food to your baby as a strategy to decrease your child’s likelihood of developing an
allergy to it.
If this is our first time meeting, I’m Dr. Belousov.
I’m a board certified pediatrician and I equip parents with knowledge, so they can
care for their children with confidence.
Many parents are nervous about introducing the common allergenic foods to their baby,
because they fear an allergic reaction.
But delaying the introduction of the allergenic foods can increase the child’s risk of becoming
allergic to them.
There is no data to suggest that delaying the introduction of sesame to babies has any
benefits.
So like with the other allergenic foods, it’s one that we want to introduce early.
I put together this video series to give you confidence in introducing all the common allergenic
foods to your baby.
This is the sixth video in the series.
If you’d like to check out the other videos, I have them linked at the end of this one.
So at what age should you introduce sesame to your baby?
For many years parents were advised to avoid exposing their child to the common allergenic
foods in their first several years of life.
However the Enquiring About Tolerance or EAT Study showed that for babies who are at higher
risk for developing food allergies, feeding them the common allergy causing foods early
and often, reduced their risk of developing allergies to these foods.
Most babies are developmentally ready to safely start taking solids around 6 months of age,
and when they’re showing all the signs of readiness to eat.
First you can start off with introducing several of the less allergenic foods.
Then you can begin to offer the common allergenic foods to your baby one at a time, even in
the first week of starting solids.
There’s no reason to delay exposing your baby to age appropriate versions of sesame
containing products early on in the food introduction process.
I go through examples of a food introduction approach that will allow you to more systematically
expose your baby to a variety of foods, including the common allergenic foods, in my video titled
“Example of Week 1 of Starting Baby On Solids” and my video titled “How To Create Balanced
Meals & Expose Baby To A Variety Of Foods.”
They’re linked up here if you’d like to check them out.
Now let’s talk about how you can safely introduce sesame to your child.
Pick a good time in the morning or afternoon to introduce the new food.
I don’t recommend introducing the common allergenic foods close to bedtime so you give
yourself several hours of awake time to observe for a potential allergic reaction.
Also avoid introducing two new foods on the same day.
In the event that your child has an allergic reaction, it will be more challenging to know
which one was the cause.
It’s recommended to spend several days giving the new allergenic food when introducing it
for the first time, and holding off on offering any other new foods during those days.
However it is fine to bring back foods that your baby had previously and did well with
during the days that you’re introducing the sesame containing food.
The easiest way to introduce sesame to a baby is through the use of either tahini or sesame
paste.
Regardless of which one you use, the sticky texture of these foods can present a choking
hazard, therefore they need to be thinned out before being offered to the baby.
For every teaspoon of tahini or sesame paste, mix in at least one to two teaspoons of a
fruit or vegetable puree that your baby has had previously.
Or you can mix either of them with a baby cereal or full fat plain yogurt.
Since yogurt is cow’s milk, which is another potential allergenic food, first make sure
that you introduce yogurt to the baby several times before offering the two together.
As your baby gets older and masters eating solids, you can thin out the tahini or sesame
paste with some water or oil and spread it onto a whole grain bread or a pita bread.
Since wheat is also one of the common allergenic foods, first you'll want to introduce them
plain.
Hummus is a food that contains tahini, but the store bought varieties tend to be high
in salt.
So if you want to offer hummus to your baby as a way to expose them to sesame, it’s
best to make homemade hummus, which is actually easy to do, just don’t add salt to the portion
that you’ll be giving to the baby.
You may be wondering how much and how often you need to offer sesame containing products.
At this time there are no recommended guidelines for the amount that a baby should take.
In addition the exact amount of the allergen needed to decrease a child’s risk for developing
an allergy to the food is still unknown.
The EAT study showed that early introduction of several of the common allergenic foods,
including sesame, decreased the risk for developing an allergy to these foods.
In the study they had babies take a weekly total of 3 teaspoons of sesame paste divided
into at least two meals a week for a total of at least 5 weeks.
Children who are at higher risk for developing food allergies are those who have eczema and/or
were diagnosed with an egg allergy, or have a family history of allergic conditions.
These babies especially were shown to benefit greatly from early and frequent exposure to
allergenic foods in their diet as a strategy to potentially prevent them from developing
food allergies.
And even if your child doesn’t have any risk factors for food allergies, delayed introduction
can increase the risk of becoming allergic to these foods.
Therefore there’s no benefit to delaying the introduction of the allergenic foods.
In upcoming years I believe we will have clear guidelines on exactly how many grams of the
allergenic food to give and how many times a week.
If we follow the amounts that were shown to be effective in the EAT study, you can aim
for a target of offering a total of 3 rounded teaspoons of sesame paste or tahini divided
into two to three meals a week.
Be sure to continue to expose your baby to the common allergenic foods on a weekly basis,
since regular exposure is key to allergy prevention.
And even if you aren’t able to give as much as I’m recommending, your child stands to
benefit from the consistency of being exposed to the common allergenic foods in their diet.
If you’d like to know how an allergic reaction to a food would present itself, and what to
do in the event that your baby has an allergic reaction, I do have a separate video that
goes into detail on that.
It’s linked up here, if you’d like to check it out.
I also have the videos on how to introduce the other common allergenic foods linked up
here.
See you in the next video.