Your'e correct about "something not being right." But there's a vociferous scientific debate about what that is. The theories basically break into two camps:
1. Nut allergies are becoming more common because children are being reared in increasingly cloistered, antiseptic conditions and hence sometimes don't develop the "natural immunity" their farm-reared, tree-climbing, worm-eating predecessors had. Best evidence for this is some research that suggests the statistical likelihood of having a nut allergy has gone up over the last few decades.
2. The actual incidence of true nut allergies is low (around 4% as opposed to the 25% claimed by some sources), i.e. most of the diagnosed sensitivity is mild (not all allergies are life threatening) and most of the current hysteria is driven by hypersensitive, smothering Yuppie parents . Strongest evidence for this is the fact that genes can't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in serious childhood food allergies between the mid 90s and the end of the last decade.
