peanut allergies. how did they get so bad?

Ive heard someone theorize that because peanut butter is a severly modified food and kids eat it so often, it might contribute to allergies. I can see the possible truth in this. i dont believe that eating too much peanut butter durring pregnancy can cause an allergy UNLESS the child is pre-disposed to the allergy or the mom is allergic. i had a peanut butter sandwich nearly everyday of my pregnancy and besides some slight irritation durring the first few weeks of life my son has shown no symptoms of peanut allergy. he is, however, allergic to dairy. But i believe that was both inherited and then directly passed to him by me because i had an unknown dairy-allergy. my body cant proccess the casein in cows milk and so i was passing the long undigested proteins to him in my milk. Dairy allergies can also be connected to this train of thought that modification of the original product can increase allergies. Raw milk is much better tolerated than pasturized.

I think that peanut allergies have always been with us, we just didn't hear much about them before. The food industry has changed along the way, too. It used to be they used corn oil for everything. Then they started cooking their foods in peanut oil to enhance the flavor of the product. Once kids in schools started having reactions, then people, and the industry itself had to sit up and take notice. It used to be when you'd look at a food, and check the list of ingredients, they would just say something to the effect of 'natural oils' included. Some kids are so allergic to peanut (whole or oil) that if the machine made to process the food has even traces of it left on it, that the child may go into anaphalactic shock! Now they often label foods saying that it 'may' contain peanut oil, just in case there might be trace amounts left in their machines. I don't think a mother eating peanuts, or other things, during her pregnancy would have anything to do with if their child will have allergies to peanuts, or not. I do think it's probably based in our genes themselves, and within family history.