Dry Roasted Peanuts are Unhealthy: Study

Snacking on dry roasted peanuts is more unsafe than eating raw peanuts, warns a study.

Peanuts can cause allergic reactions like rashes, swelling, skin irritation and redness. Sometimes these conditions can be fatal. Recent researches found the best way to beat these allergies in children is by introducing them to nuts in small doses from an early age till they are immune to the reactions. But a new study suggests that dry roasted peanuts are not a good option to snack on as the temperature changes caused at the time of heating interferes with the body's immune responses against allergies.

The experts extracted proteins from raw and dry roasted peanuts and injected them into mice that already had skin reactions. They then observed immune responses and noted the mice's bodies exhibited greater responses when given protein extracts of dried nuts compared to raw peanuts. The mice also suffered severe allergies

"Our results in mice suggest that dry roasted peanuts may be more likely to lead to peanut allergy than raw peanuts: the dry roasting causes a chemical modification of peanut proteins that appears to activate the immune system against future exposure to peanuts," said Amin Moghaddam, study author and researcher of Oxford University, in a news release.

"Allergies in people are driven by multiple factors including family genetic background and exposure to environmental triggers. In the case of peanut allergy, we think we may have discovered an environmental trigger in the way that peanuts are processed by high-temperature roasting," he adds.

The authors believe the study findings also help reason why peanut allergies are less common in East Asian countries. The peanuts are mostly eaten raw, boiled or fried than dried roasted. However, they plan on investigating further before confirming the benefits of eating peanuts in the raw form.

"We know that children in families with other allergies are more likely to develop peanut allergy. However our research is at an early stage and we think that it would be premature to avoid roasted peanuts and their products until further work has been carried out to confirm this result," said Quentin Sattentau, lead researcher and professor at the Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, reports the BBC.

More information is available online in the journal Allergy and Clinical Immunology.