Why is peanut allergies so much more prevalent than other food allergies?
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Milk and Eggs are actually the most common food allergies, with nuts coming in 3rd
Exactly why we don’t know, but the human body is much more likely to develop allergic reactions to certain proteins found in milk, eggs, nuts, and shellfish
These allergies are also particularly bad because they are in everything.
Milk and eggs are in a lot of foods and baked goods, while nuts are also very common particularly in snack foods.
This is why nut allergies are talked about so much, because many schools are now having to ban nuts and associated snack foods because there have been a lot of instances of kids getting severe allergic reactions from them.
They aren’t – you just hear about them more, because an allergic reaction to peanuts can be fatal.
I’ve lived in Europe, Latin America and the US. Anecdotally it seems to me that it’s prevalent more here in the US than in other countries. Here you have all those food packaging disclaimers and kids can’t take peanut products to school etc etc
They’re probably not the most prevalent, just the most commonly seen severe ones.
Why they’re so much more prevalent now than they were when I was a kid, nobody knows yet. Some theories suggest it’s due to our overdeveloped hygiene in the west. Others posit that it’s due to chemicals and things we’re exposed to in our environment.
We do know that people in developing countries don’t get allergies nearly as much, but when they move here, they do. I could easily see it being exposure to chemicals. Everything we touch is synthetic and probably treated with various compounds. Being steeped in that 100% of the time must have some consequences.
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