Allergy is on the increase because the modern western immune system does not get enough challenges these days. Especially when young - no measles, mumps or chicken pox, no playing in muddy fields or parks. Or so goes the TOO CLEAN theory
Well perhaps. My theory is that the immune system gets too many challenges from the modern food chain
Once upon a time when we ate meat the serving on the plate came from just one animal. But because of mass production a single burger from a chain may now contain meat from up to 100 animals, each with its own immune history. Similarly, it should be called chickens tikka
Dairy products used to come from just one fairly small herd. Now milk is collected, mixed & processed in huge regional plants, thus destroying the flavour, apart from anything else. One reason why goats milk may be good for those with allergies is that it still tends to come from just one farm
So we regularly consume in a single sitting a real cocktail of animal products whose different environments will have produced a veritable cocktail of immune system products
All fruit & vegetables contain natural toxins - they would not otherwise be able to survive their predators. All of these natural toxins can be shown, by normal laboratory tests, to be potentially toxic to humans. Some we have learned to cope with by suitable methods of preparation - such as boiling bitter cassava for a good hour. Others just dont seem to have caused the damage once feared - we no longer share the Victorians fear of tomatoes
Now we eat a wide range of 'novel' fruits & greens. In winter in England the choice used to be limited pretty much to carrots, sprouts, dried peas or cabbage. Add to that courgette, butternut squash, aubergine. Not to mention ordinary 'English' vegetables grown out of our season in almost any country of the world
Obviously these 'novel' foods are not, in & of themselves, a problem, since billions of people have survived healthily on all manner of diets
But the Hedgehog Allergy Hypothesis says that modern allergies are caused by our just not yet having evolved to cope with such infinite variety. The appetites they feed but us make ill
