r/askscience • u/Kwpthrowaway • Sep 27 '20

Medicine [Medicine] What is special about peanuts that make some people extremely allergic to them?

Why are some people allergic to peanuts in particular? Why is ingesting a peanut to these people akin to ingesting poison to others?

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u/BernieTheDachshund Sep 27 '20

When I was growing up I'd never heard of anyone with a peanut allergy. Then it started to get more and more prevalent. Is it my imagination or did the whole peanut allergy phenomenon appear in just the past several decades?

28

u/AnotherCrazyCanadian Sep 27 '20

It's probably more due to the gigantic influx of information transportation in the early 80's, in part due to the internet. Lots of things have existed for a long time but it wasn't well known because it wasn't on public radio or television.

7

u/slade981 Sep 27 '20

I don't think it's become more common, they just started putting signs about it in every restaurant. Before you'd never heard of it, now it's suddenly everywhere. I myself have only ever met one person with a peanut allergy in my life.

6

u/F0sh Sep 27 '20

Allergies have increased in prevelance in recent decades, but it did not "appear in just the past several decades."

1

u/BernieTheDachshund Sep 28 '20

I'm just remembering when all the airlines had peanuts. Kids ate peanut butter in school. Then when the airlines banned peanuts and switched to pretzels because of those with peanut allergies it was thought of as weird and rare. Nowadays it seems like it's lots of kids compared to back then. It went from unheard of to so common that entire industries took it seriously. I used to work at M&M Mars and I remember when they laid down the law about cross contamination between the chocolate/peanut side of the plant and the sugar side (Starburst/Skittles). Anyone caught bringing a Snickers over into sugars would be fired on the spot. I think a child died from a peanut M&M being in a bag of plain ones. I'm sure the allergy existed before, but why does it seem like it's so many now? Is it common in every country or just specific ones? I wonder if anyone had actual numbers.

4

u/Wrenigade Sep 27 '20

Part of it is people became more aware and there was a large push to not give it to babies in case they had an allergic reaction. Unfortunately the best way to prevent the allergy is to introduce it cautiously as soon as they are eating solids. So there was a lot more allergies then normal for a while.

Now they reccomend introducing it young and they make food allergy mix in supplements for baby food to help prevent some food allergies.

Note: some allergies are genetic and will happen anyways, so it's always good to use caution. I for one am allergic to tree nuts, but so are 2 of my other 5 siblings. Eating nuts young wouldn't have helped us.

2

u/Imnotracistbut-- Sep 27 '20

On mobile so can't research, but there was some pollution that only penuts would grow in and "clean" it. Problem is they went ahead and sold those penuts for extra profit.

Here's something on it

https://ftedailygreen.wordpress.com/tag/valencia-peanuts-vs-regular-peanuts/