I was listening to NPR awhile back about allergies and there was a guy on whose theory basically that Americans are way too obsessed with keeping their kids clean. That because we disinfect so much, don't let our kids eat dirt, etc... that our children's immune systems didn't have enough to fight against. Which is why for some kids, their immune systems decide that harmless things like peanuts are bad for them.

He did a study that showed if you owned a dog, the odds of your kid having food allergies dropped significantly. His theory was that the dogs brought relatively harmless germs and bacteria from outdoors, which exposed the kids and gave their immune systems something do to.

I don't know if he was full of bs or what, but I own two dogs and we've never had allergies. I also feed my kids all kinds of foods we're not supposed to way earlier than recommended. But I also wonder if this is a genetic thing. There really aren't any people in either my family or Tom's with food allergies.