fungus or feebs?

i was chatting with another food allergy mama today, comparing theories on why so many kids (e.g., mine, hers) can't eat the stuff we all ate as kids.

she mentioned the notion that we keep potential allergens out of our kids' diets for too long compared to folks in other cultures, thus inadvertently setting our munchkins up for allergies.

i mentioned several wildly different ideas i've heard over the years:  

• the foods we eat aren't pure any more (wheat in vegetable soup, milk in bread, soy in everything)
  
• we've hand-sanitized ourselves so clean that our immune systems are turning on pb&j in lieu of germs
  
• foods have been genetically altered, which has f***ed us up
  
• peanuts, especially imported ones, might have some sort of fungus similar to the ergot – known as st. anthony's fire – that infested rye in the middle ages and sickened huge numbers of people
  

and then i threw out a little something i've come up with in my musing on this subjects:  we've breed a nation of feebs.

think about it:  we've lifted the forces of natural selection so that, instead of the strong surviving, pretty much everyone is surviving. 

case in point? moi. without the benefit of strong eyeglasses, midol and zoloft, i would have been lion lunch on the savanna. when i reproduced, i needed c-sections to get the kid out and then formula when she couldn't breast feed. 

homo erectus didn't have level 3 nicu's. ma ingalls didn't go to a high-risk pregnancy clinic, nor did her friend mrs. boast have access to in vitro, which is why she and her husband tried to get laura to trade her baby for one of their horses. (i may have read all the little house books over and over.)

we are so freaking lucky that we have so many ways to fend off death and disease, to create and extend life. but is the flip side that we're watering down our genes a little bit? or bending them into new forms that leave us vulnerable to new ills?