This peanut allergy thing, real or imagined, is not confined to this country. My wife has a nephew who lives in Scotland who has it. But I think you might be on to something as far as misdiagnosing these allergies. Similar to the mania for giving every kid , usually a boy, who can’t still still in the classroom a dose of Ritalin. Weird.
They do that too - apparently being a boy is now some sort of illness.
As far as the peanut allergies go, they apparently do tests that cannot differentiate between an allergy to birch pollen (which is very common and not life-threatening) and an ingested peanut allergy. What’s worse, peanut allergies vary in severity and you can’t actually diagnose a life-threatening peanut allergy without feeding them peanuts.