That's Fit

Last year, my son had a classmate with a peanut allergy. In consideration for this child, parents were asked not to send in treats for the class that contained peanuts. But there was no school-wide ban on peanuts or peanut butter. Kids were still welcome to bring the old PB&J standby in their lunch boxes. Many schools, however, are choosing to make school-wide peanut bans to protect kids with allergies.

I'm not allergic to peanuts, but I am allergic to tree nuts. As an adult, it's difficult to know exactly what foods contain nuts that I may be allergic to. So, as a safety measure, I just don't eat anything that I'm not sure of. I can imagine that this type of self-monitoring is even harder for school-age children. And seeing how kids trade things in their lunch boxes so frequently, I can see where a peanut ban could be wise. (Imagine a kid bringing in a chocolate chip cookie that has some peanut butter in the batter. If that was given to a kid who has allergies, the child may not guess that there are peanuts in there, and then have an allergic reaction.)

So I wouldn't mind if there were a ban on peanut-based products altogether at my son's school. But some parents disagree and feel that the needs of a few shouldn't dictate what the majority does.

The other day, while hosting over a dozen of my children's playgroup friends here at my house for some outdoor fun....I created a frozen treat guaranteed to fill their little tummies up in a completely nutritious and fun way. Bapaloneo (a weird word my three and five year old children made up) Pops served the purpose I had intended and energized the group for several hours of insanity. Try them this summer.

Fitz's Bapaloneo Pops:

• Cut bananas in half length-wise, and stick a popsicle stick in the flat end.
• Coat the banana with creamy peanut butter.
• Roll the peanut butter coated banana in a bowl of regular cheerios.
• Place pops on a pan covered with freezer paper and then put them in the freezer for an hour or so.

Peanut allergies have become pretty popular. And what causes them remains a bit confusing.

When my now almost three-year-old daughter was a baby, our pediatrician told us the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended peanut consumption be delayed until age three because the allergy was believed to be developed due to repeated exposure at a very young age. But new studies suggest no relation between allergies to peanuts and when a child began eating them. This is what AAP had to say. Since the cause is still clear as mud, study authors recommend more research on the cause of early allergic reactions to peanuts, as well as successful prevention efforts.

Meanwhile, we're still eating sunflower seed butter in our house. This web page touts its similarity to peanut butter in consistency, taste and price and offers a nutritional breakdown (it does contain a bit more sugar than some peanut butters). We started when the pediatrician gave us the nitty gritty on nut allergies and we have no plans to stop. It's really tasty. I like it better than peanut butter. We pick up a couple jars every time we go to Trader Joe's. But it's also available in other local markets.

So until researchers come up with some more news on peanuts, consider sunflower seed butter as a tasty alternative that you don't have to worry about.

Peanut allergies may soon be a thing of the past, says Dr. Wesley Burks, a food allergy expert at Duke University Medical Center.

"I think there's some type of immunotherapy that will be available in five years," reports Burks who says ideally, this therapy would change a person's immune system response to peanuts from an allergic one to a nonallergic one.

This would be great stuff, given that peanut allergies are growing more and more common. And while many kids grow out of other food allergies -- milk and eggs, for example -- only 20 percent ever lose their peanut allergy, which often appears in the first three years of life and manifests itself in range of symptoms, from minor irritation to the whole-body allergic response called anaphylaxis.

Stay tuned for more on peanut immunotherapy. And be on the lookout for news on the genetic engineering front. Burks says genetics may one day produce an allergen-free peanut.

I like peanut butter. I like it on crackers, on celery, on apples, anything that takes just a dab of the stuff that I know isn't entirely healthy for me.

I've had many a recommendation that I ditch my usual Jif peanut butter and replace it with something natural in order to make my snacking more health-conscious. Until recently, I hadn't taken any action on these recommendations. But something caused me to pass by my trusty Jif the other day at the grocery store. Something took me right for the natural stuff. And I bought it.

It took some getting used to, my new peanut butter. The consistency, the texture, the taste, the liquid on top, the stirring, the required refrigeration. It's so different my kids knew right away that something was different when I tried to sneak it on their toast one morning. I didn't hook them. But I will. Because my new peanut butter is good. Really good.

If you want to make a snack switch like me -- peanut butter is a good snack because it contributes to fullness and makes you less likely to munch on other foods -- Family Circle magazine recommends these three picks.

• Smucker's Organic Peanut Butter: Available in creamy or crunchy, with no added salt and a bit of honey.

• Santa Cruz Organic: Made with rich Spanish peanuts and available in creamy or crunchy and light or dark roast.

• MaraNatha's Organic No-Stir: There's no messy top oil layer in this one. Easy to spread and very nutty and tasty.

Several years ago a friend of mine moved down to the Atlanta area. I flew down for a visit before they even had their boxes unpacked. As we were driving along a road we saw a big stand advertising boiled peanuts. Being from the north we were both a bit puzzled and had never heard of such a thing. Curiosity got the better of us and we pulled over to try it out. My first impression wasn't too great as boiled peanuts don't smell all that great. But the flavor was good -- soft and a bit salty. It turns out that roadside treat had some health value as well.

Boiled peanuts have up to four times the phytochemicals of raw peanuts. Researchers think that antioxidants from the shell are absorbed during boiling -- making these tiny treats a nutritional powerhouse.

For people with potentially fatal food allergies, every day brings with it a challenge to watch what they eat (or come in contact with). More kids seem to developing peanut allergies for example. In the past half-decade, cases of this nut reaction have risen 35 percent. But there's hope that these allergies can be lessened through new methods of combating their effects.

One example for peanut allergy sufferers has children taking a small dose of the peanut protein -- under a doctor's supervision of course. This has been shown to help mitigate the severity of reactions if peanuts are accidentally consumed. It's called oral immunotherapy and the treatment has helped grow their tolerance.

Even though over two million school kids have such allergies, there's hope that through more studies and treatments doctors may be able to curb the reactions altogether! Will we see a pill that can cure allergies someday? Maybe not, but if this research has any implications, then we may not be far away from a reality close to it.

Fitzness Fiends is a section devoted to you, the reader! We all have learned so much on our path to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! Fitzness Fiends are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect, some are not. All have health on the mind. Please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Elizabeth Lienhart

Age: 23

Occupation: Mechanical Engineer

How often do you exercise? Five to seven days a week.

What type of exercise do you do? Spinning, running, kickboxing, weight training, dancing around the house.

What gets you to workout, even when you're feeling lazy? Two piece swim suits and skinny jeans!

An interesting study at Purdue University may make you want to add peanuts to your diet.

In the study, volunteers were given about 500 calories worth of peanuts per day to eat whenever and however they saw fit. So, if they wanted to down all the peanuts in one sitting, they could. Or, if they wanted to snack on a few peanuts here and there throughout each day, that was cool, too.

After 8 weeks, each person had gained an average of 2 pounds. Now, you may be saying to yourself, "They gained two pounds? Why would I want to eat peanuts, then?" Because, these people did absolutely nothing different with regard to exercise and diet, save for adding 500 calories worth of peanuts to their diet. Researchers anticipated that the volunteers would gain 8 pounds at the conclusion of the study, but, as stated, they only gained about 2.

This is likely because of the high-protein and high-fiber nuts filled the volunteers up, making them less apt to eat as much during other meals. What's more, when the researchers checked back with the peanut-eating volunteers after 19 weeks, they found that they boosted their resting metabolism by 11 percent.

The takeaway from all of this? Unlike the volunteers in the study, no one is forcing you to eat 500 calories worth of peanuts every day. But, you can still receive the appetite-suppressing and metabolic rate-boosting benefits of eating peanuts by snacking on about a handful per day.

If you're one of the six million Americans who've never gone to a ballgame and enjoyed peanuts because you're allergic, you may soon be able to sing the "buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack" line and actually mean it.

Thanks to a scientist from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a new processing technique has been developed that effectively eliminates the allergenic components of peanuts.

Though human trials have yet to be conducted, scientists are hopeful that this process will yield similar results to those found in lab animals and, if so, the allergy-free nuts will be available to consumers in the next 2 years.

I like a little peanut butter now and then, especially smeared on a few multi-grain crackers. My kids like peanut butter too, and a banana with a light coating of peanut butter is a common snack in our household. Is this creamy treat good for us, though, considering a serving contains about 14 grams of fat? Here are a few thinking points, compliments of Prevention magazine and this article, to help us determine whether or not peanut butter is a keeper.

It seems peanut butter is a good source of protein. It has eight grams, in fact, in every serving. It's also a good source of the antioxidant vitamin E, with 3 mg per serving. Peanut butter does have some fat, but it's the mono-unsaturated type and that makes it A-OK. If you want to skimp on some fat, though, you can always opt for the low-fat peanut butters, but this will only save you two grams or so and the calorie-content is not much lower either. Two issues to consider about peanut butter are the added sugars and the sodium portions, which might be a problem for some people.

I'm making the call that peanut butter is a pretty nutritious food item, in small doses anyway. What's your call?

I don't know what it is that makes some people crave one kind of food and others another but it seems like the most common craving culprits are anything salty or anything sweet. I know lots of people who will ruin their diet for potato chip, popcorn and cheezies, while I've always had to battle my love for all things sugary including the two main groups -- foods with frosting and foods with chocolate.

Cookies are one of the hardest sweet treats for me to avoid so I've been searching out some healthier recipes and found a site with an entire page dedicated to healthy cookies recipes. The three that I'm looking forward to trying are the Sugarless Heart Cookies, which look good for anyone on a low-sugar diet, the Low Fat Peanut Butter Cookies because they sound tasty with the added benefit of protein and, perhaps the most delicious-looking find, the recipe for Low Fat Triple Chocolate Cake Bars.

Have you got a sweet tooth but are on a diet? Have you got any low-fat, low-calorie or sugar-free recipes to share?

Fingers are crossed in North Carolina, where researcher Mohamed Ahmedna is tentatively thinking he may have discovered a way to nullify peanut allergies for the millions of people who suffer them every year. It involves using a food enzyme to deactivate the specific allergens that cause people all the trouble. Without those allergens peanuts would be safe to eat and safe to use in processing without worry of allergic reactions.

The tests that have been done so far have only been on serums drawn from severely allergic people, and since those showed no reaction the next step is full-fledged human trials. Cross your fingers!


Via Slashfood

Being a parent is tough enough without having the additional worry of dealing with a kid (or kids) with serious allergies. Moms and dads whose children have the kind of allergies that could potentially be deadly know that seemingly harmless situations could be very dangerous to their child.

For example, parents of kids with severe peanut allergies have to make sure that not only do their children not eat peanuts or peanut products, but also that they don't go near anything made in the same vicinity as peanuts. They have to make sure that teachers are aware of the allergy and they have to prepare ahead when doing things like flying, as many public places are not peanut free and sometimes even just the smell could set off a very serious reaction.

All of the worry and extra preparations can be tiring and stressful but, as this article points out, you're not alone. A number of parents helping their kids deal with allergies contribute their stories to the piece, and there is also some advice to make things a bit easier. If you're a parent who is a seasoned veteran when it comes to looking out for kids with allergies, do you have any helpful tips for other moms and dads out there?

My kids are on a mission to try to out-do Mommy in the neat recipe contest, and I think they're winning. Almost every time I put a meal down on the table, they ask to change it up in some way or add something else to it. Often, my first thought is Eww!, but I never say that. As long as their requests are healthy I say "sure, let's give it a try!" Then...after they've done the taste test first and have given their approval I give a try myself. I've loved it all.

I think it's cool that they're not slaves to social pressure or traditional meal planning. They like what they like and they have oodles of new ideas. Maybe they'll spawn their own recipe book with this stuff, but for now....here are a few of their innovative and healthful treats. Enjoy!

Nutty Nana: Peel one entire banana and smear reduced fat peanut butter on it. Sometimes we put cherries on top of the peanut butter.

Yodelaheehoo Yogurt: Open a cup of your favorite yogurt and add any of the following ingredients: grapes, yogurt raisins, raisins, broken pretzels.