>>Since 50 years ago nobody ever heard of or had peanut specialness.
We played outdoors for hours every day, didn’t sanitize our hands every time they touched something, breathed second-hand smoke, and ate simple foods back then. In other words, we had immune systems that worked.
I swam in and built a failed raft to navigate a stock tank.
Stepped on Bull-Nettles. Jumped off the roof with Evel Kneivel.
Shot doves and ate ‘em. Fell off the trailer fulla hay on the way down the hill.
Personally, I’m not a whole lot of sympathetic toward peanut allergies.
I think there is a gut bacteria that has been shown to protect against food allergies and that is often wiped out by excess antibiotics in infancy. I’ll still take my 21st century lifestyle but forgot 50 years, the numbers of sufferers are up like 50% in less than 20 which is truly incredible.
Virtually every kid in those days ate tons of peanuts and peanut butter. Never knew one kid with a peanut allergy. Never knew it existed.
But undoubtedly, it's real. The question is why? Like you implied: is it the partly or mostly due to kids today being more "protected" than in past eras? Really puzzling.