1.5 Nut allergy
In the UK, peanut and tree nut allergy is the most common cause of severe and fatal allergic reactions. It affects 2% of children and 0.5% adults. People diagnosed during childhood rarely grow out of the allergy.
The most concerning aspect of nut allergy is that, over a 20-year period from 1992 to 2012, there were 69 fatalities in the UK. Therefore, in 2017, the BSACI published guidelines for the diagnosis and management of peanut and tree nut allergy (Stiefel et al., 2017).
Activity 2 Know your tree nuts
Allow approximately 10 minutes.
Consider the following:
- Make a list of as many tree nuts as you can.
- What is the difference between peanuts and tree nuts?
Answer
- Your list might include almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pistachios, pine nuts, shea nuts and walnuts.
- Peanuts are legumes which produce a pod.Figure 4 Peanuts
Tree nuts are a hard, shelled fruit.
OpenLearn - The science of nutrition and healthy eating
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.