As a late millenial, my guess for the cause of high prevalence of peanut allergy among younger people was because of being less exposed to dirt and being subjected to over-cleanliness when we were growing up. Iirc, the news and medical community overemphasised cleanliness in the 1990s. So, parents overdid it and the children’s immune system has become less attuned and familiar to different foreign objects in the body. The immune system then overreacts to non-threatening objects in the body resulting in allergy.
Mid to late 90s was when it started becoming a talked about threat, but 2000s was when we reached “oh my god even a molecule on the hem of someone’s clothing is enough to kill 10 people” shit. If you trace backwards that means late Boomers and Gen Xers started, I think, Ziplock parenting a lot - less real play in the dirt, more sit on the couch and eat Dunkaroos.
Basically the last generation that had “be home when the streetlights come on” was the last generation to have the more resilient immune systems, and the two things are probably fairly related.
So does that mean that this was really a Millenial problem? Cuz I don’t think that you heard about this before the early 2000s, maybe the late 90s.
As a late millenial, my guess for the cause of high prevalence of peanut allergy among younger people was because of being less exposed to dirt and being subjected to over-cleanliness when we were growing up. Iirc, the news and medical community overemphasised cleanliness in the 1990s. So, parents overdid it and the children’s immune system has become less attuned and familiar to different foreign objects in the body. The immune system then overreacts to non-threatening objects in the body resulting in allergy.
Mid to late 90s was when it started becoming a talked about threat, but 2000s was when we reached “oh my god even a molecule on the hem of someone’s clothing is enough to kill 10 people” shit. If you trace backwards that means late Boomers and Gen Xers started, I think, Ziplock parenting a lot - less real play in the dirt, more sit on the couch and eat Dunkaroos.
Basically the last generation that had “be home when the streetlights come on” was the last generation to have the more resilient immune systems, and the two things are probably fairly related.