Preliminary Study on Cooked Proteins Cutting Allergies

I often get asked whether cooking food will reduce the symptoms of lactose intolerance. The answer to that is a flat "no." Cooked lactose is still lactose.

For the most part cooked proteins are still cooked proteins and are just as allergenic. However, a new study out has some very preliminary evidence that some children with allergies can outgrow their allergies by exposure to cooked foods with milk. This is so preliminary that the study authors are warning parents "not to try this at home" until more research is done.

"My first impulse is that I don't think this information is ready for prime time," said Donald Perlman, a West Orange allergist affiliated with Saint Barnabas Medical Center. "Food allergies can be a fatal problem. It's a serious business, so if people try to do this on their own, it could spell disaster."

Angela Stewart has an article in the Newark Star-Ledger:

In the milk study, conducted at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, researchers hypothesized that some children with milk allergy would be able to tolerate extensively heated (baked) milk products, such as muffins or waffles.

Of the 100 children studied -- the average age was 7 -- about 75 percent were able to tolerate heated milk and were still free of allergic reactions when re-evaluated three months later. But because a quarter of the children in the study had some reaction, the study's authors stressed that avoidance should remain the accepted standard.

"The bottom line is that currently, the only way to find out if a child can tolerate baked milk is to do a feeding test," said Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn, the assistant professor of pediatrics who led the study.

A second study found similar results with children who had egg allergies.

Both studies will appear in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.