I like good news. And recently, I was encouraged by two hopeful findings in the field of nutrition. This first one has an interesting history.

Twenty five years ago, in an effort to shield a child from developing food allergies, parents of children at high risk were counseled to withhold peanut-containing foods from their child until age 3. That was the official recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts. Parents were also advised to avoid feeding egg whites to infants before they turned 1, due to the potential for allergies from egg protein.

In 2008, this recommendation was withdrawn. Why? The research showed that this practice did not help prevent food allergies in children.

The tables turned again in 2015. The LEAP study (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) found that peanut-containing foods such as peanut butter could actually help prevent the development of allergies when they were introduced to high risk children earlier (4 to 6 months of age) rather than later in life.

This seemingly paradoxical finding convinced several health organizations to change gears and to recommend early (not late) introduction of peanut-based foods to infants. In 2021, a panel of allergy and immunology experts expanded this recommendation to also include earlier feeding of eggs to infants.

And here’s the good news today. In late 2025, researchers from the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reported that the prevalence of peanut allergies in children has “decreased significantly” in the years following the recommendations for early introduction of peanuts and eggs in a child’s diet. One explanation is that a child’s immune system may learn not to react to a potential allergenic food if it is introduced at a younger age.

The other positive news is for adults who want to “keep their marbles,” as one advertiser put it. Vitamin D — the sunshine vitamin — is known to help protect our brains as we age. Researchers have also observed how a deficiency of this versatile nutrient may cause thinking skills (cognition) to decline in older individuals.

But for ethical reasons, it is difficult to get specific information from randomized placebo-controlled studies on the role of vitamin D and brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. However, in 2016, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences stated, that “several nonrandomized trials have reported cognitive improvements among older adults supplemented with vitamin D.”

Now, 10 years later, come the results of a prospective cohort study in the journal, Neurology. Almost 800 women and men who had no dementia when they were about 39 years of age were followed for 16 years into their mid-50s. Subsequent tests at that time showed that those with higher levels of vitamin D in their blood also had less accumulation of a protein in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Stay encouraged. The more we learn, the more we know.

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