Eli5: Why are nut allergies and gluten intolerance so prevalent and serious in certain populations (like in much of the US), and negligible to the point of being even considered a myth in other parts of the world?
In: Biology
Reporting, mostly. A lot of the developed world actually keeps records and statistics on this sort of thing. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t, and human beings have a nasty tendency to not believe something if they haven’t personally experienced it (and that holds true all over the planet, under-developed or otherwise).
Other times it’s a matter of a lack of exposure to such things at an early age. Parents in the Western world today are afraid of their kids having nut allergies, so they don’t expose their kids to the nuts “just in case,” and their kids end up having a reaction the first time they encounter the nuts later in life. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy (there are ways to overcome the “allergy” in these instances, but it requires being closely monitored by a doctor while slowly increasing exposure over several months).
In the case of glueten, that’s mostly a fad. Around 1% of the population (1 in 100) actually has a medical condition that glueten causes a problem for, but if you spend any time in Los Angeles you’d think the human race as a whole had lost the ability to handle it at all. I forget the comedian that said you could rob a liquor store with a bagel in that town, but he isn’t far off.
Latest Answers