A simple post-harvest process to take peanuts grown today and make them free of allergens has been developed by agricultural researchers at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University . The new process – believed to be a first for food science – could provide relief to millions of peanut allergy sufferers, and be an enormous boon to the entire peanut industry. The process does not degrade the taste or quality of treated peanuts, and might even render them easier to process for use as a food ingredient.

Immunoassays showed 100 percent inactivation of peanut allergens in whole roasted kernels, and the processed peanuts showed no reaction in tests on human sera from severely allergic individuals. The inventor, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, associate professor of food science in North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University , i optimizing the process further to remove allergens from other foods. “We are extremely pleased that we are well on the way to finding a solution to a vexing problem that has enormous economic and public health ramifications, both for peanut sensitive individuals, and the food industry as a whole,” said Ahmedna.

Panut and tree nut allergies are the most severe of all food allergies, affecting approximately 3 million Americans, and causing 100 – 150 deaths from anaphylactic shock annually and many more hospitalizations. In industrialized nations, the allergy has been rapidly increasing in children, for causes that are not entirely understood. One study showed that between 1997 and 2002, peanut allergies in children doubled in the United States . Today, an estimated one percent of all children suffer from the allergy.

Life can be stressful for families with peanut sensitive children, who must take extraordinary precautions to prevent contact with even small traces of peanuts or peanut dust. Tracking, record-keeping and labeling for peanuts is costly for industry, while schools and other institutions that serve the public have limited their use due to concerns about public health and liability.

Source: The North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University