If you’re expecting and you eat nuts or peanut butter on a daily basis while pregnant, a new study out of Holland that was published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine reveals that you may be raising your unborn infant’s chances of getting asthma down the line by as much as 50%. Wow! That’s a pretty scary number.

What’s interesting is that this exposure to nuts in the womb did not seem to raise the risk of developing food allergies, despite the fact that nuts are one of the most common food allergens in children.

Here are the highlights of the study:

• 4,000 pregnant Dutch women completed dietary questionnaires about eating habits
• Children’s diets were also assessed over an 8-year period
• Kids were assessed for developing asthma over the same 8-year period
• Results showed that kids whose moms had eaten even just 1 peanut butter sandwich a day had the higher risk of asthma

Researchers aren’t sure of the exact mechanism for the link between maternal nut intake and their child’s risk for asthma, but one theory is that the nut allergens are crossing the placenta and sensitizing the fetus in utero. They do emphasize, however, that this is only one study and more studies will be needed in the future to duplicate and validate these results.

Also, it should be noted that less than daily intake of nut products did not appear to increase risk for asthma at all. Nor was any link seen between other common food allergens eaten during pregnancy and asthma risk in kids.