Its untrue, peanuts and milk allergies were very common 30 years ago, probably more than now in percentage. My genetic grandmother can't eat most of processed food without having an allergic reaction. Probably people were a bit ashamed of their non-threatening food allergies (most food allergies just give a lot of gas and small stomachaches).

Also related, Distilbene did not only wreck fecondity, it gave a lot of children food allergies, and i'm pretty sure distilben distribution stopped in the late 70s, so maybe we should just get the numbers and compare, but i'd bet food allergies were more prevalent in the 80s.

Interesting, I might have been in a bubble then. My parents and their generation immigrated to the US from a developing country, much poorer, but in all of our family gatherings, there was never a concern for allergies. And we use basically everything in our cooking.

I specifically remember weddings and whatnot when snacks were given out to everyone that there was no hesitation in offering anyone else's kids food for fear of them having an allergy.

I wonder then what the catalyst was for schools banning nuts and airlines no longer serving peanuts. Assuming people were always allergic in similar or higher proportion with similar severity, was it simply changes in the political winds?

It's because

(1) the internet and social media means you know about far more people with allergies than before,

(2) you are a adult and not a child, so you know more people now

(3) institutions have adopter broad inclusionary policies even if no one with an allergy is present

(4) institutions are being far more careful now (you eating a your granola bar poses no significant risk to someone with a peanut allergy, but it's still banned sitewide).

I asked my parents about this, and they said that peanuts weren't common back then - they were expensive and a luxury so as a result we didn't have such widespread visibility of the problem.

Allergies where common 30 years ago, but you are right about the percentage of people that have allergies is raising and getting more severe. You can even find references to allergy going back to Aristotle's time, so not exactly a new thing. I haven't got a link to it, but did take a webinar on allergy some weeks ago.

None know exactly why where are getting more allergic, but since allergy most often is the immune system attacking harmless things some theories is that we have to clean an environment in our homes.

I think that the immune system "correlates" them with other harmful substances which are sometimes but not always present. The number of possible culprits is long: pesticides, random cleaning products used on the processing equipment, sometimes mold can grow on peanuts if they're stored improperly, the list goes on.

Our immune systems are in many ways similar to police forces, and if they hear "a problem being reported" often enough while peanuts are around, they may just bunch them together with the offender.

The problem is compounded by a dirty baseline environment. In the early stages, the immune system is "primed" with a "baseline" of what should and shouldn't be there, but if the VOCs and such are already there, it just learns that they are OK and doesn't react to them.

I attended school in the late 90s early 2000s (in canada).

It was a big deal then, there were kids i knew who were deathly alergic to peanuts.

Severe allergeries seem to be on the rise but i think your timeframe is wrong.

I went to to 8 different schools between K to 12th grades in 6 different states, and I don't recall meeting anyone who was deadly allergic to anything. I'm pretty sure I didn't even learn about epipens until maybe later in high school or possibly college.

The only ailment in kids that I think I had heard of was asthma, for which people had inhalers.

Of course, my data is weak and anecdotal, but based on the fact that a staple American food isn't allowed in schools anymore, I assume something must have changed.

Attending K-12 in the late 80's/early 90's I didn't know anyone with a serious allergy in school. There was never any concern about peanut butter food/snacks, or anything like that. A few kids with inhalers, that was it.