Nuts...why are they so bad

i didnt avoid nuts in pregnancy in the 1990s

I don’t think either of my daughters’ schools were/are completely nut free. Have never sent them with nuts.

Summer baby with hayfever here! Funnily enough (although not at all funny), my throat swells with penicillin too. Apparently they have proven that most who think they are allergic to penicillin aren’t (I used to work in pharmacy) - not those of us who swell up though!

The advice on seafood is related to food poisoning. I love it, but it made me heave whilst pregnant! I did occasionally eat nuts without thinking because I love them and did introduce peanut butter early to ensure exposure. I have terrible hayfever so was told to avoid nuts in pregnancy.

I think it’s more complicated that “they all died” although that will explain some.

too much peanut oil

There was some research that countries with higher nut exposure in kids generally had a population with less nut allergies.

Kids in Israel eat a snack called Bamba (like wotsits) made of peanuts and they seem to have a lower rate of peanut allergy according to research.

Maybe midwifes at pregnancy check ups should encourage nut consumption as well as other perinatal vitamins as part of a wider health programme for community health.

This is interesting as I am a beekeeper and we once had a talk from an immunologist who said beesuits can cause bee sting allergies- because they have trace venom on them- if you hang them with other clothes or wash them with other clothes other family members could develop an allergy.

I don’t think your parents specifically would have done anything “wrong” I mean just everyone in the west is too clean for our evolved immune systems.

Third world countries have way less allergies, but much higher infant mortality!

I vote we keep the cleanliness but use that knowledge to treat the allergies. Immunotherapies for example are showing a lot of promise in improving the lives of people with severe allergies!

I have anaphylaxis with penicillin, I'm not sure that my parents could have done anything differently to avoid it, so I'm not convinced that all children with a food allergy were just kept too clean or not introduced to the food enough etc.. maybe for an intolerance but not severe anaphylaxis.
I have heard that summer babies are less likely to get hay-fever which is interesting if true.

You can develop allergies as you age. My mother wasn’t allergic to nuts. In her mid 50’s she ate a piece of cheesecake that had almonds in the crust and she went into anaphylactic shock and nearly died. Now she has to carry an epi pen.

I have good allergies that are miserable. Resulting in face swelling, nausea and terrible diarrhoea. Most people I meet are sceptical. It genuinely baffles me that anyone would think I would go to a restaurant or live a life and deliberately not eat most lovely things. That I would choose this way of life that is endlessly debilitating, boring and tedious. In some respects it’s a good question why are there so many nut allergies etc, and there is some interesting points above. But I suspect that your question isn’t really born from curiosity and empathy. It’s comes from your own inability to accept that with 8 billion people in the world many of them have vastly different lives to you. It’s your own intolerance and lack of empathy that motivates your question, I meet your tedious and nasty irritation every single day. So here’s a question for you how did you come to a point in your life where you couldn’t see past the end of your own nose? Were you always selfish or is it a new thing?

I am 35 (born 1990) and have been allergic to peanuts my whole life presumably. I was diagnosed as a small child. In my experience, knowledge around allergies and access to allergy testing in the 90/00s was terrible in comparison to now.
But it’s just like anything isn’t it, our knowledge and means of diagnosis are increasing all the time so makes sense that more aware people, more people have a diagnosis, and the statistics therefore show an ‘increase’.

My late sibling was allergic to so many things in the 1970s/early 80s. They died in childhood. Anyone who was in their primary school class would have had some exposure to the phenomenon.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, too. We regularly heard of infants choking on nuts.

What really happened was that they choked because their throats had swollen up.

Are you in England? I thought most/all schools in England are nut-free.

I don’t know anyone with a nut allergy and never seen it banned in my kids schools etc

I didn't mean whole- definitely agree that's a choking risk hence NHS advice being not until age 5.
For under 5s, I give nut butter on toast and in porridge, and ground nuts stirred into porridge, cakes, biscuits, almonds in curry sauce, crumble topping. Not only reduces the allergy risk but is a great way of getting a little extra protein in to fill the children up for longer (and reduce the incessant demands for snacks!)

I was born late 50s and my mum told me of two of her acquaintances whose babies died from choking on nuts. As time went on there were questions as to whether these awful deaths were caused by anaphylaxis rather than choking.

I was born in 1966 and first realised I had nut allergy age about 6. It was unheard of then! I had a fairly bad reaction, the doctor came, mum put me to bed and thankfully I survived the night! Perhaps the doctor gave me something (antihistamines?) but I don’t remember. I don’t think anyone at school knew. I just avoided nuts.
now I carry 2 EpiPens and antihistamines , ask for nut free flights, remove myself from people eating nuts etc.

So, my pregnancy craving with DS was peanut M&Ms, it was ok yo eat them whilst pregnant in 2006. My son has a severe nut allergy.
I avoided them with My other 2 children but did introduce peanut butter in small amounts from 6 months, neither has the same allergy!
Could be a complete coincidence
, who knows.

I started to become allergic to foods in my twenties (now late 40s). Some are anaphylaxis-causing allergies, some are not. (For example there are a couple of different allergy-causing proteins in most nuts. One type might cause anaphylaxis whilst another causes a less severe reaction).

I grew up in a non-sterile/not immaculate house.
I ate well, not overloaded on UPFs.
I never had antibiotics as a child.

I ate all the things I’m allergic to with no issues for years. it’s very frustrating.

I had friends at school in the late 70s / early 80s with nut allergies.

Dw mine was allergic to dairy and eggs and I had a vaginal birth. His dad is allergic to stuff and very eczema-y, it just runs in the family.

I listened to an interesting Zoe podcast about allergies. There was a researcher there who was talking about how peanut allergies are almost non-existent in Israel because there’s a peanut puff snack that is very popular and which babies eat from a young age. With our boy, we were told to dilute down peanut butter and let him lick it off a spoon at 4 months to stave off allergies based on research like this.

Re: why are nut allergies so bad- from what I’ve seen, it seems you can’t grow or ‘ladder’ your way out of them. I do the medical register at a school as part of my job and often children will join in reception allergic to soy, sesame and nuts, then by year 6 they’ll just be allergic to nuts. In my own experience my CMPA+ soy+ egg boy grew out of soy, was laddered out of milk (we had ice cream today!) and is getting there with egg. He had a scary reaction to omelette a while ago so we had to pause egg ladder and only do challenges in hospital from now, but he can eat it cooked in cakes and biscuits.

This makes you sound like a right dick op

I wish people would stop repeating this. Nut allergies existed before this advice and they are still around.

I am born in the 70s and developed allergies to some nuts in my early teens, after being raised on peanut butter and Nutella.

Funnily enough all my allergies came about when I became a vegetarian.

I avoided nuts with DC1 and didn't avoid them with DC2. Neither has food allergies.

As other posters have said, the reasons for nut allergies and the fluctuations in their frequency at population level are not fully understood and there's likely to be several reasons.