Dalia asks if peanut oil before age 2 can sensitize and cause later allergy, then is this a food we shouldn't be giving babies until they are over two? I would say "yes". I don't know where I got the advice, but I always understood that peanuts (in all forms) should be avoided for the first few years. It is also a food some breastfeeding mothers need to watch. Currently peanut butter is vitually unattainable in Australian shops because we have recently had a massive nationwide recall due to contamination with salmonella. Children particularly have been very sick, often with repeated episodes of bloody diarrhoea. Their mothers unknowingly kept feeding them with the contaminated product! They eventually traced it to mice droppings in the peanuts, but I think the real problem is that the peanut butter is not cooked (much or at all?) in processing so it is easy to contaminate. Ros Escott [log in to unmask]