Why are food allergies so common now when they seemed to be rare or non-existent before?
In: Biology
I don’t think there’s any actual studies done on that. But if a kid in the past came across a peanut and just died, well that was it. There was no medical epinephrine to inject and make you better, so they’d just die. Since kids were dying from everything, allergies were just one of those things. If you made it to adulthood, you likely didn’t have a life threatening allergy. If you had any allergy, it probably made you uncomfortable and you didn’t go near it.
My fiance is allergic to tree nuts. And throughout his childhood, his grandfather would give him nuts. They made his mouth feel strange and so he didn’t like them, but it took a while before they realized he was allergic.
Adults with non severe allergies in the past were likely doing the same thing. ‘Everytime I have shrimp, I get sick. Maybe I should stay away from them.’ ‘Milk makes my stomach hurt, maybe I should stay away from it.’
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