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General Feedback
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WARNING!
EC: We sent S's email to a dear friend of ours from India (who now lives in the USA) for another opinion. This was our friend's response:
"I remember that my mother was very surprised when I told her that infants should not be fed honey for the first year. In India, honey is given very routinely for the reasons that this person's email mentioned. On the other hand, in India, scientific research can be a little shady. Also, the value of life is less. One infant less due to an allergic reaction to honey counts for little, sadly. Also, infants here are different and are born with different immune systems. I don't think you should recommend honey for US infants.
I heard something really interesting from an Indian parent in the US the other day. She was saying that her child, with two biological Indian parents, had a host of allergies. This is apparently very common for children of Indian parents who are born in the US. It is surmised that these children inherit, through their birth, highly evolved immune systems that are used to battling a lot of germs. But in the US there are comparitively few diseases to combat with the result that these highly evolved immune systems have nothing to do. They then turn on themselves and create all sorts of allergies. Isn't that interesting?
But I don't think it would be wise for you to recommend honey. The consequences could be disastrous for that one infant who can't take it. "
General Feedback
Being spores, however, means that they can survive cooking temperatures, and so boiling honey will do nothing to reduce this risk.
I also somewhat disagree with the statement that second generation Indians develop allergies due to a bored immune system. Your immunity is developed by oneself, through exposure to disease, not inherited from the parent (although genetics may play a role in the functional ability, the actual functioning is environmental). Industrialized nations have much higher levels of allergies anyway, regardless of where your parents came from, so it's more likely that the environmental toxins are just something that NO immune system is built to easily handle.
