A study recently released in the New England Journal of Medicine may forever alter our relationship with the peanut.

NEJM Evidence, an offshoot of the eminent science journal, published the results of a long-term study on the link between peanut consumption and the development of peanut allergies. This study found that children who were introduced to peanuts as infants had a 71% lower rate of peanut allergies by age 12 compared to a group of children who avoided peanut consumption.

This study was a follow-up to the 2015 “Learning Early About Peanut Allergy” study, or LEAP, which found that early peanut consumption could reduce the risk of peanut allergy by 81% by age 5. This year’s study used the same group of children and found that the findings stayed largely true for children up to the age of 12.

Both studies used a core group of 640 children who had either severe eczema and/or egg allergies, and were between 4 and 11 months old when the studies began in 2006.

Since 2017, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued guidelines for introducing infants to peanuts early in life to fend off the risk of developing peanut allergies later on, based mainly on the results of the LEAP study. The organization recommends introducing infants to peanuts between 4 and 11 months of age, depending on the risk of allergy, with higher-risk infants receiving peanuts sooner.

“I usually don't start talking about it till they're 6 or 7 months old,” said Dr. Michael Petrosky, a pediatrician at Allegheny Health Network. “Usually I want them to do a lot of fruits and vegetables first before they get to the peanut stuff. But usually I talk about peanuts when they’re between 6 to 7 months of age, and that’s consistent introduction of peanuts.”

By the age the organization recommends for parents to introduce peanuts to infants, those infants may be in the middle of teething, so getting them to down peanut products may be difficult. There are options, however.

“Most of them don't have teeth at their age,” said Petrosky. “You can thin out peanut butter with some warm water. Or they do have a product that’s ‘peanut powder,’ which is just like finely-ground peanut-type stuff which you can sprinkle on any type of food.”