Monday, March 2, 2015

Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests

Evelyn Kluemper 3/3/15
Current Event

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/feeding-infants-peanut-products-could-prevent-allergies-study-suggests/?_r=0

Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement claiming that peanuts should be withheld from children that may be at risk of severe allergies. Since then, the percentage of American children that have peanut allergies has quadrupled to 2%. A new study proves that exposing infants to peanut butter could reduce the risk of severe peanut allergies. In this experiment, there were two groups of children at high risk of allergies from ages 4-11 months. One group was given six grams of peanut protein per week until the child turned five. The other group excluded from nuts in their diet. Among the infants fed the protein, only 10.6% of them developed an allergy. Of the children that were withheld from peanuts, 35.3% of them developed an allergy.
I have a friend who has been withheld from peanuts for her whole life due to her severe allergies. If she is exposed to nuts, her throat will swell and she will have difficulty breathing. Thanks to this new study, children may be able to avoid a risky allergy.

This article described the experiments in detail. However, the author does not include ways to build on these results. For example, the author did not speculate whether similar studies could be done for eggs, shellfish, soy, or wheat. The article was surprising to me because this is the contrary of what I would have expected.

10 comments:

  1. Evelyn did a great job on her current event article. In her article, she did an excellent job present statistics to support her argument. Evelyn also incorporated a personal story which really helped strengthen her article. Also she a good job including both sides of the experiments. For example she gives the statistics for the children who are given peanuts and the children who aren't which really helps her article. I think Evelyn could have had more information to bulk her article and I felt she could have been more descriptive and less abrupt in her analysis. I learned a lot from this article, because like her I thought that giving infants more peanuts could cause allergic reactions. Though, it was really the opposite, in the fact that the babies who ate the peanuts had a lower chance of getting the allergy. Overall, Evelyn did an excellent job with her current event.

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  2. I enjoyed reading Evelyn's current event article on peanut butter allergies. I was very surprised to hear about this new study. I never thought that you could prevent nut allergies by exposing the peanuts to kids early on in life. I think Evelyn was great at summarizing the main points of this study. She was good at providing evidence to support why the study could be useful. I especially liked how she incorporated her personal story. It showed how important prevention to peanut allergies can be. Evelyn's critique was really good. If I could change anything it would be to add more support from the article showing how important prevention to peanut allergies is. I think is she used stronger vocabulary, she could strengthen her critique and put emphasis on the study. Also, she could've added more background about the study, like it's progress and how it was found. However with all the being said, Evelyn did a great job with her critique at being able to pick out what she thought was the most important and making everything easier to understand. It was a nice critique.

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  3. Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

    This was an interesting article. Evelyn clearly stated the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000, that children should not be given peanut butter until age three, but peanut allergies grew when peanuts were withheld. Her also clearly gave the results of the new study regarding peanut allergies. Evelyn gave a good personal example of her friend who has a peanut butter allergy and how dangerous it would be if she consumed any peanuts.
    Evelyn could have included that Dr. Lack, who conducted the study, got the idea when giving a speech in Israel and learned that very few Israeli children who were given peanut products had peanut allergies compared to British children. Also, Evelyn should have described the study in greater detail, including that the study was conducted in London.
    After reading this article, I learned that it is possible to prevent peanut allergies in some children and that maybe in the future, studies will show that allergies to other food products could be prevented by doing similar studies.

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  4. I loved and enjoyed reading Evelyn's article review on peanut butter allergies. I was very curious to learn about this new study. I never thought this was possible that you could prevent nut allergies by exposing the peanuts to kids early on in life. I think Evelyn was great at summarizing the main points of this study and you could tell that she understood the topic very well. She provided lots of evidence to support why the study could be useful. I liked how she incorporated her personal story and her opinion on it. It showed how important prevention to peanut allergies can be. Evelyn's critique was really good and informational. If I could change anything it would be to add more support from the article showing how important prevention to peanut allergies is and quotes from the article]. I think she used stronger vocabulary, she could strengthen her critique and put emphasis on the study. Also, she could've added more background about the study, like it's progress and how it was found. Although, Evelyn did a great job with her article review and being able to pick out what she thought was the most important and making everything easier to understand. It was a nice critique.

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  5. I highly enjoyed reading Evelyn’s current event article on the study of feeding infants peanut products at a young age. In her article, Evelyn presented the summary of the article very well, she was able to include facts and statistics which helped me understand the article even more. Evelyn also did an incredible job with connecting this issue to her life, by bringing up that this actually truly does affect her. In this article I felt as if I knew what was happening at all times, the clarity was really great. Although Evelyn presented this current event very well, there are some aspects she could work on. In my opinion, Evelyn could add on to an idea more and expose more information to the reader. Also, she could have explained more to help the reader understand the purpose of the article entirely. I was pleased to learn a lot by this article. I learned a lot more on peanut allergies and really like to hear that the new method of exposing kids to peanuts at a young age could help prevent the allergy. Overall, Evelyn did an amazing job with this critique.

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  6. Martha Thomas
    3/4/15
    Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

    I was very impressed with Evelyn’s review of her article. I liked how she connected it to her friend’s severe peanut allergy; it proves how common it is to have this allergy, and how prevalent this issue is. I liked Evelyn’s last paragraph, and how she was critical and curious about the idea of children’s risk of allergies reducing not only through exposure to peanuts’, but also to other foods. I also liked how in Evelyn’s summary she not only provided details about the experiment, but also details about how this theory has changed since the study in 2000.
    Evelyn could have improved her final paragraph by coming to the conclusion that children might develop immunity to the negative effects of the peanuts through exposure. I was once taking a medication, and after a while it stopped working because my body grew immune to it, it could work the same way with allergies (but in reverse). I think Evelyn could have also given details about the original study in 2000.
    Due to this article I learned about how the number of children with peanut allergies is increasing. This is a very interesting fact and I hope scientists research w

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  7. Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

    Evelyn did a great job on her current event article. I was very curious to learn about this new study. I didn't really think that there was a way to prevent nut allergies by exposing peanuts to kids when they are young. I think she did a great job explaining the main idea and I also think should understood the point of the article very well. Evelyn did a good job presenting the current event, but I think she could have improved on giving more information to the reader to better understand the article and I think she could have implemented more key points like how Dr. Lack, learned that very few Israeli children who were given peanut products had peanut allergies compared to British children. Overall I think Evelyn did an amazing job with this article.

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  8. Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

    Evelyn's current event “Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests” Evelyn did a great job on her current event review and I found it very interesting that there is a way to avoid getting a peanut allergy. Evelyn reviewed the article well by summarising it well, but I think she could of added some quotes to the summary. She also seemed to master the idea of the article very well. One last thing I think she did very well with is she included scientific facts in her summary, like she used a lot of numbers to make sure that her audience understood what she was talking about. Something I think Evelyn could improve on is expanding more on what she learned about this article. I was surprised to learn that there could be a way to prevent getting peanut allergy, due to the fact they are so common. I found this article very interesting and i am interested to see if they test this with any other foods, like wheat.

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  9. I chose to review Evelyn’s article, because the title intrigued me. Evelyn did many things well in her review of the article, “Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests”, by Andrew Pollack. The first thing that caught my eye, that I really liked about her article was the fact that she used a personal story about her friend who is allergic to nuts. However, she explained well that this new study could possibly prevent that because if children start having peanuts at an early age, the risk of being allergic to peanuts will decrease. I know this because Evelyn did a very good job summarizing the article and giving key points. ONe last thing that Evelyn did very well on is giving quantitative data. She explained that since 2000 kids with peanut allergies has raised 2%. And that they held an experiment with 11-14 month old children, and from that experiment. THere were two groups and one did not have nuts in their diets, and about 35% of them grew up to have peanut allergies, while they other group had nuts and only 10% of them had peanut allergies. ALthough Evelyn did a great job on her review, there are some things that she could improve on. Evelyn got the point of the article across very well, but I feel like she could have included more details in the article to explain more to help the reader know even more about this subject. Also, I liked how she gave a personal story, but she could have expanded on what they are going to do in the future to help this problem. One thing I learned from this article is that it is possible to prevent children from having peanut allergies by feeding them food with peanuts from a very young age.

    Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

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  10. Pollack, Andrew. "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests." Well Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies Study Suggests Comments. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

    Evelyn's article, "Feeding Infants Peanut Products Could Prevent Allergies, Study Suggests" by Andrew Pollack, explains a new statement saying that exposing infants to peanuts could stop the risk of allergies later in their lives. Evelyn did a great job of shortly explaining the study with good statistics and information that left the reader with a good understanding of what the experiment did. She also brought up a really interesting thing that the author of the original article could have done. She said, "the author does not include ways to build on these results. For example, the author did not speculate whether similar studies could be done for eggs, shellfish, soy, or wheat." It would have been really interesting if the author talking about this. The last thing that I really enjoyed about Evelyn's article is that she had a good connection to why this study is important by bringing up her friend that has a peanut allergy. However, I would have liked her to expand a little bit more on the subject. Maybe she could have included some other statistics about how many people suffer from peanut allergies. I would also recommend that she maybe could have ended her response with an explanation of what she had expected from the article because she said, "The article was surprising to me because this is the contrary of what I would have expected." I know many people who have peanut allergies that vary from serious to minor allergies so this article intrigues me a lot. Would their lives be different if only they had been exposed to peanuts at an early age? It will be beneficial to society when this study was expanded on.

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