malady du jour

So when did allergies to nuts become the big thing? Not only are warnings about the presence of nuts and nut derivatives showing up on menus and lists of ingredients all of a sudden, here's The Onion with one of its "News Briefs" (scroll down the page: it's about an unfortunate werewolf). And as I and seventeen or eighteen other people might recall, an allergy to peanuts played a role in an episode of Wonderfalls. (That was a TV show to which Fox gave about four minutes' chance earlier this season, for the other 6.4 billion less 17 or 18 of you.) I mean, it's obviously a potentially serious issue for people with such an allergy - but nuts have been part of the human diet for millennia, and now suddenly they're the beneficiary of allergists' fond attentions? Curiouser and curioser...