Why do we still have allergies if humans have lived around plants for a long time?

Question

Why do we still have allergies if humans have lived around plants for a long time?

In: 31

Answer 1

Few good answers already, but part of it is inverse darwinism.

Advances in medication and awareness made it so you are much more likely to reproduce despite having deadly “defects” that would have eliminated them from gene pool in the past.

You can see it with nut alergy, number of cases exploded in last few decades. Part of a reason is that all the food is now labeled, schools have epi-pens. Etc.

So children with those deadly allergies get to live and procreate (and be part of the statistics)