Well the baby-boomer generation didn't have the peanut allergies and not many died young either.I don't know one who did.
This is such a tragic story. It is true that some kids just died years ago and and no one understood why. But it is also true that 50 years ago (the boomers) childhood deaths became the rare exception at the same time that the medical community finally got a handle on diagnosing and treating allergies. But that was at the same time that Cracker Jacks and other peanut products became every-day items across the land and not rare treats that many would never be exposed to, yet these kind of allergies were virtually unheard of then.
Something isn't "what it used to be" with this peanut stuff. It's no longer a one in a million thing, and the increases do not seem to be a result of better diagnostics and record keeping.
Is it the peanuts we produce today versus 50 years ago, the more frequent exposure, or the people we produce that has changed?
We need to find out.
I think its some toxin in our enviroment. Maybe too much plastic or something that is lowering our immune systems too much. One theory (this is counter to mine) is that kids are being raised in TOO clean of an enviroment, thus they are not getting exposed to germs and microbes early enough for the body to develop resistance to it.