Why aren't Israeli kids allergic to peanuts?

When I was a kid I don't remember anyone being allergic to peanut butter. Peanut butter and jam was a staple of my diet. But today, you just try to eat a PBJ sandwich in public in Canada or the U.S. Seriously, just try it (I will be on the sidelines filming what happens next when they drag you off to peanut jail.)

I don't want to dismiss peanut allergies; some of my children's friends have them. For those families, these allergies are very real.

Scientists agree that the number of children with peanut allergies has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. In the last five years alone the numbers have doubled. No one seems to know what that is. Maybe, some of them suggest, pregnant mothers are eating more peanuts and peanut butter than they did in the past. Ah ha! It's the mother's fault. Well, isn't that convenient?

I did some reading and I found out that all food and environmental allergies are on the rise in children. The theory is that since we live in a more hygienic world and we catch less childhood illnesses, our immune systems have time to catch more minutiae in our diets and the environment. Since our bodies no longer have to fight off nasty parasites everyday (because we are so darn clean and our bodies can no longer fight off disease), they have started to fight proteins which in their innate logic are bad.

Okay, so if that is true, why aren’t more Israeli kids allergic to peanut butter? I send my kids to school with peanut butter sandwiches at least once a week and no one has ever noticed.

Apparently the answer may have something to do with early peanut consumption being more common in Israel (the exact opposite of what my pediatrician recommended in Canada years ago). Bomba is the favorite food of toddlers in Israel. It is a puffed peanut butter flavored snack – looks just like a cheesie but it isn't.

Bomba is an institution in Israel; 69% of all Israeli babies are eating it by the age of nine-months. Frankly I don't like it – I think it is an oral abomination, but what do I know? Statistics indicate that I am squarely in the minority on this matter.

In case you are thinking that perhaps you should bring your peanut-allergic child to Israel and that would solve the problem. It won't. Allergies are geographically sensitive so your peanut-allergic child will probably end up allergic to sesame seeds here and you will just have a new set of worries.