A study found fruit and vegetable munching babies were less likely to develop food allergies than those eating primarily processed baby food.
The new study examined infant's overall diets for the first time, as opposed to only taking one food item into account, Reuters reported.
The researchers studied food logs from 1,140 babies that were generally recorded over the first year of their lives.
Forty-one of the children had developed a food allergy. The team compared these babies to similar cases that had not been reported to have an allergy.
About eight percent of all children are allergic to some type of food item.
"We have been aware that certain diets seem to reduce the risk of allergy in infants," Dr. Magnus Wickman, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who did not participate in the study, told Reuters. "The mechanism behind that is that we think that different kinds of fatty acids and antioxidants, different kinds of vitamins and essential minerals are good for your health and also prevent allergy."
The babies' diets were "scored" based on what they ate during that crucial first year.
"The analysis showed that the infants who were having more fruits and vegetables and less commercially produced baby foods and also less adult foods were the ones who were less likely to develop an allergy by the time they were two," lead author Kate Grimshaw, said.
"It's not that they didn't have commercially-made baby foods, it's just that they did not have them predominantly in their diet," she said.
Parents are often advised to keep certain foods out of their children's diets in order to prevent allergies; Grimshaw thinks it may be unwise to cut down diet diversity.
The study did not discover the cause of the findings.
"We know that there are nutrients in the diet that educate the immune system. And one could argue that if they're not there in adequate amounts when the child's immune system is developing, that may be one way that this is working," Grimshaw told Reuters.
