In advanced Western societies there has been an increase in allergies of all kinds in just my lifetime.
Ozark Americans born after World War Two like me can remember when every school lunch table had soft white bread and huge gallon size cans of USDA commodity peanut butter out for the children to free graze. Some of the children’s parents didn’t have the quarter for a lunch.
They also sold “extra” milk for two cents for white and three cents for chocolate, with a cup out in front of the milk full of pennies, like you see in stores today, except in theory those were loans.
If anyone had a peanut allergy or was lactose intolerant I suppose they’d have just died.
I was a lawyer before I read what an Epi Pen was. They came to market in 1983.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Since people have not changed, and will never change, since Eve tempted Adam, there has to be an explanation.
Consider the hygiene hypothesis
Hygiene hypothesis - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
My father, while we were out quail hunting, would find a place in the creek where the water was flowing and cup his hands and drink.
Since I’d been taught in school to not do that, plus I knew my mother would surely kill my father if I did and died of it, I didn’t drink from creeks.
It may be too many mothers demanding everything be sanitary for their precious children has produced susceptibility to allergens.
Another first world problem, those who drink from streams don’t worry about.
