Originally Posted by GCab

With regard to causation/reason for increasing numbers, there was some media interest recently around the poor girl (and her devastated family) who died after eating an incompletely labelled Pret, and some chats with allergists following it. A current line of thinking seems to be that your body learns to tolerate foreign proteins by the simple expedient of doing what all toddlers/pets do with all new stuff, which is to try and eat it; and if you don't have the chance to do this as an infant due to excessive cleanliness but instead encounter the stuff later, especially through broken skin, then it sets up a more violent response if you then ingest it later in life.

Therefore (the thinking goes) the most at risk are those who (a) do not have oral exposure to the allergens at a very early age, due to excessive (advertiser-driven) home hygiene/lack of play opportunities, and (b) have eczema with weakening of skin defences, which means they then get exposed to the allergen in a more 'priming' way. This may be getting more common, mainly due to (a). This is NOT intended as 'victim- (or carer) blaming' - for a start it doesn't explain everyone, it's just statistical and (so far) unproven, and secondly those who scrub their home clean of every substance are just trying to do their best for their child - maybe due to exactly the fears discussed here. It may be that in future we realise that a bit of early-age random dirt-eating (or peanut exposure in pregnancy, or whatever) is healthier than Dettol and isolation, but it's too early to say for sure.

I must admit that when it comes to the recent news story (and I know I am opening myself for criticism here) if I had a daughter who could die in an instant from a very small amount of nut protein, I wouldn't just teach her to "be very careful about reading the label" at an airport sandwich shop, as quoted there, I would teach her that her life is different to other people and to take her own food rather than buy processed (even if starting a trip abroad, you can always shop fresh ingredients). I know this is very life-limiting when it comes to restaurants and social life, but there is a sensible middle ground and taking your own cheese sandwich for a short flight, with the individual components from a trusted source (if you don't trust the baker, just buy some cheese and an apple), would seem to occupy it.