Ronrsr, you are right that modern medical science is far in advance of what was available even a few years ago let alone when I was a child.
When I was 10 no one even imagined anything like MRI machines for example except science fiction writers.
However I had heard for example, that medical researchers had concluded that
allergies and asthma were far more common in kids growing up in the city without pets then kids who grew up in the country with pets and among various other animals.
So some of it it seems might be comming from changing lifestyles and not just better diagnosis.
Also if previously, it had been mearly misunderstanding of an ailment, and what the real cause was (Peanut butter for example).
That would not explain why it must be totally banned when we are told the reason for the ban is not that someone just might not feel so well but that they could supposedly suddenly fall into a coma and instant death, G-d forbid, just from the smell from someone elses sandwich on the other side of an open eating area.
I mean when I was kid, I never heard of any stories of that happening to anyone in any school cafeteria even where no one could figure out the reason for the death.
Now I have heard stories of kids dying in school because of attacks from other kids.
For example several years ago a kid in a public school in Personhattan killed another kid with a single punch.
I think bullying and hatred are far more dangerous then anything anyone eats and yet
there never has been and never will be, any laws totally banning from schools and other public areas, anyone who looks like he might violently attack another kid.