Sorry, I meant only my family, not the country. As in no parents experienced the loss of a child (born ~1950s and beyond) due to an allergy or an unknown cause (e.g. maybe they did due to a car collision, but not an undiagnosed allergic reaction). Point being that exposing all of those kids to all foods very early did not result in a single one dying. And neither did their kids.
Obviously, I am not advising anyone to not follow their doctors’ instructions, but the sheer numbers in my anecdotal study make me wonder.
You wouldn’t be the only one to question that.
There is a theory that a popular children’s snack which contains peanuts is responsible for a low rate of peanut allergies in Israeli children.
For peanuts specifically, early childhood exposure is pretty well validated to reduce allergy incidence at this point [0]. It's by far the most well validated case of the allergen exposure hypothesis. Interestingly, for the high-risk subset of children, early exposure is likely to increases incidence. Children with conditions like eczema, where the skin barrier is broken and allowing peanut proteins to get through the skin rather than purely orally, is thought to be an allergy development risk factor.
