[Reily]

Why is it so prevalent now?

I remember getting peanut butter sandwiches in grade school lunches. Was that just a secret Darwinian effort to kill off those suffering from the allergy? I don’t remember a single person suffering from it when I was a kid.

[ridesthemiles]

4 kids in our family:

A whole loaf of Wonder bread for school lunches we took every day.

PB & J nothing else. NO CAFETERIA

[Freee-dame]

I wonder if something has changed in the growing of peanuts from when peanut allergies were unheard of. There’s been so much modification of plants to make them more drought resistant, insect resistant, etc.

Wheat, for example, was once called “the staff of life” and must have been very nutritious. Now it has ten times the yield per acre since before major modifications but has lost much of its nutritional value.

[zeugma]

I remember getting peanut butter sandwiches in grade school lunches. Was that just a secret Darwinian effort to kill off those suffering from the allergy? I don’t remember a single person suffering from it when I was a kid.

Same here. I think it's vaccines, and possibly other environmental factors.