The NHS should place greater focus on allergy prevention so more children can live safer, healthier lives, an MP has said.
Labour's Becky Gittins is pressing the Government to review advice which recommends babies are weaned earlier if they show signs of developing an allergy.
The NHS currently recommends introducing solid foods to babies from around six months of age, when they are seen as being developmentally ready.
However, some research suggests weaning babies sooner can significantly reduce the risk of developing allergic conditions.
The Journal Of Allergy And Clinical Immunology found introducing an allergen into a baby's diet when they are between four and six-months-old reduced the risk by 77%.
Additionally, a study by King's College London in 2024 found regularly feeding children peanuts from infancy until the age of five reduced the rate of peanut allergy by 71%.
Rates of allergic diseases, such as asthma, hay fever, and food allergies have been on the rise in the UK.
Around two children in every classroom have a food allergy, according to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). And the Food Standards Agency (FSA) estimates that at least 6% of adults in the UK have a diagnosed food allergy.
The Babies and Infants (Allergy Guidance) Bill, which will be presented by Ms Gittins to the Commons on Tuesday, aims to raise awareness of prevention, early intervention, and calls for a review of current guidance to ensure healthcare professionals feel empowered to provide targeted advice.
The Clwyd East MP said: "I've got a particular personal interest in this at the moment, not only because I've got a severe anaphylactic nut allergy myself, but I'm also pregnant.
"I've found there's a bit of a gap in terms of our advice.
"If I want to talk about allergies, I need to go to an allergy specialist. If I want to talk about pregnancy, I need to go to a midwife or a GP. We need to do more to treat allergies in the primary care setting."
Ms Gittins said her life had been "massively affected by my severe food allergies - where I can travel, opportunities I can take, social things".
She added that current NHS advice, which is to start weaning from six months, is "still the best advice" for most children, but those at higher risk of allergy should be treated differently.
"What people need to know is that if your child is suffering with severe eczema, if your child is showing signs of early allergy, that actually there's probably a slightly more tailored route towards infant feeding and weaning that can be helpful in your circumstance.
"It's about taking allergy, which is so common, out of that specialist space, where it's been for so long, and making sure that our sort of primary care practitioners are empowered to talk about it."
Half of participants in the King's College London study were asked to regularly consume peanuts from infancy until the age of five, while the other half were asked to avoid peanuts during that period.
Researchers found that by age 12 or older, 15.4% of the children who avoided peanuts had a peanut allergy, while only 4.4% of those who ate peanuts from an early age did.
This study built on the Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (Leap) clinical trial, which also showed consumption reduced prevalence of the allergy in children under one.
Ms Gittins said she had previously been given outdated advice because the "onus on training of allergy at primary care just isn't there".
She added: "I can go and ask the right questions and knock on the right doors, but if I didn't have this knowledge already, and my child was showing signs of early allergy or eczema, going to the GP would not necessarily put me on the prevention track.
"And that's the thing that we ultimately need to fix."
Charity Allergy UK is calling for the introduction of specialist allergy nurses and dietitians within primary care services.
Tanya Ednan-Laperouse, founder of The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, said: "Parents need clear and consistent advice about how and when to wean and feed their infant, to reduce the chance of their baby developing food allergies.
"Currently there are different opinions about weaning, leaving many parents uncertain about what's best for their child.
"Food allergies have a huge impact on the lives not just of those with the allergy, but their families too. What we really want is to prevent food allergies from developing in the first place, which is why it is particularly important that the right guidance is in place for those children that show signs of eczema or egg allergy in the first few months of life.
"Clear advice to parents on weaning and introducing allergens into the diet, based on scientific evidence, could help to achieve this goal."