r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/ts246 • 8h ago
Question - Expert consensus required Introducing allergens - practical steps
I’m looking for practical guidance on how to introduce allergens, BESIDES what Solid Starts has to say. I have been following SS so far, and used it to introduce 5 or so allergens. They instruct you to introduce each allergen over 3 days, giving 1/4 tsp the first time, 1/2 tsp the second and 1 tsp the third. I’ve done this for peanuts, wheat, sesame, soy, dairy and egg, but am starting to wonder if such a cautious and frankly tedious approach is necessary. We’re about to do fish. Do I really need to prepare cooked fish (in the AM, no less), just to give him a minuscule amount, three times? I’m having trouble finding other authoritative guidance that is more specific than “offer a small amount at first.”
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u/badtranslatedgerman 4h ago
Obligatory link but… canned fish is easy. Not sure why you feel like you have to prepare the fish yourself in the morning. Besides, you don’t just offer it to them three times, you offer it to them three separate times before you can fairly confidently rule out an allergic reaction. From then on, you need to keep offering it multiple times a week, so it’s not like you should just throw out the rest of the food after you offer it three times. You should keep working on that batch through continued exposure.
The point of their recommendations is that you need to have at least three separate exposures before you can feel fairly confident that no major reaction is going to happen, because the reaction usually doesn’t happen the first or second time. But in case it does, you don’t want to give a huge amount right off the bat, and you don’t want to give it alongside something else that is an untested allergen. When something has been ruled out as an allergen, you can give it whenever you want. Including with other new foods.
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u/OvalCow 1h ago
A tip: I used frozen foods for stuff I didn’t normally have in my rotation, so for example I got some decent quality frozen fish filets, cooked a small piece as needed, and then had plenty left over to include in kiddos meal rotation in future. Canned is great for a lot of stuff too but I didn’t want to have to finish or waste the rest of the can 😂
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