Food allergy articles
Everyone with a peanut allergy will breathe a sigh of relief when scientists
find a way to produce a safer nut. As it is, U.S. consumers eat more
than 6 pounds of peanuts and peanut products each year. Legumes are
a good source of protein, fiber, vitamin E, niacin, and oleic acid,
with mostly unsaturated fat that lowers "bad" LDL-cholesterol.
But for a small yet growing group, peanuts also induce allergic reaction.
So scientists are searching for peanut cultivars that would be less
allergenic than others. To do this, they're developing antibodies against
three of the best-characterized peanut allergens, hoping to use them
to screen the U.S. core peanut germplasm collection and determine the
levels of these allergens in each cultivar. Those accessions with the
lowest levels could then be crossbred to develop a hypoallergenic peanut
plant.
The researchers, however, have noted that the roasting process itself causes a marked increase in peanuts' allergenic properties. They've observed specific structural, molecular, and biochemical changes that raw peanut proteins undergo during roasting that may contribute to increases in their allergenic properties. They theorize that perhaps it will be possible to adjust processing methods in a way that will not increase the allergenic properties.
Soheila J. Maleki and Si-Yin Chung, USDA-ARS Food Processing and Sensory Quality Research Unit, New Orleans, Louisiana; phone (504) 286-4590 [Maleki], (504) 286-4465 [Chung].
Last Modified: 01/07/2003
