As a child, I thought peanut butter was the food group from which all others sprang. I guess I can't blame a kid who goes into shock from nut allergies for being scared of them, but why are kids sensitized? One theory which has a faint glimmer of possibility is that kids of earlier generations were exposed to more organic stuff and their bodies programmed themselves in infancy to cope with them. When food, water and air became better, infant and toddler exposures decreased so when kids finally encountered stray organic molecules of various kinds, they reacted wrong. Only trouble with that theory is kids who grow up in the least clean environments have worse allergies and asthma (asthma isn't an allergy per se, but it is related to an immune response). 'Had a fellow church congregant who had bad nut allergies, though he was some years older than me. A covered dish church supper looked a lot different to him than it does to me.
