Study co-author Dr. Ruchi Gupta pointed out that confusion exists over what a real milk allergy looks like. She is a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Northwestern Medicine, in Chicago. “A child may have a milk intolerance that his parents mistake for a milk allergy,” Gupta said. “It’s important that any child suspected of having a milk allergy have the allergy confirmed with an allergist.” A food allergy of any kind can have a big effect on a household, including food costs and quality of life, she noted. “A child with a milk allergy should receive counseling on how to avoid milk, but also on what it means to unnecessarily cut out foods. You don’t want to get rid of necessary nutrients,” Gupta said.

How to explain these results? Marylin Cornelis, assistant professor of preventative medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and one of the study authors says people may “learn to associate that bitter taste with the stimulation that coffee can provide.” In other words, they get hooked on the buzz. Although taste does play some role in people’s coffee consumption, Cornelis says people’s ability to break down caffeine and flush it from the body is a better predictor of how much they’ll drink.

The advice is the first update since the government’s physical activity guidelines came out a decade ago. Since then, the list of benefits of exercise has grown, and there’s more evidence to back things that were of unknown value before, such as short, high-intense workouts and taking the stairs instead of an elevator.“Doing something is better than doing nothing, and doing more is better than doing something,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a preventive medicine expert at Northwestern University in Chicago. Only 20 percent of Americans get enough exercise now, and the childhood obesity problem has prompted the push to aim younger to prevent poor health later in life.

“It definitely seems to be something that is becoming more prevalent,” says Ruchi Gupta, a professor of pediatrics at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. “People with a sesame allergy tend to have a pretty severe reaction and it’s a very difficult one to avoid because it’s in so many things.” Dr. Gupta is first author of a study expected to be published next week in the journal Pediatrics showing that 34% of children with a sesame allergy reported having to go to the emergency department one or more times over the previous year, compared to 19% for all other food allergies.