General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So, why the rise in peanut allergies anyway? [View all]wickerwoman
(5,662 posts)The point of the song is that they had nothing else to eat, so they ate "goober peas" which were usually animal feed.
From your link:
"After being cut off from the rail lines and their farm land, they had little to eat aside from boiled peanuts (or "goober peas" which often served as an emergency ration."
Irish people ate grass during the potato faminine but that doesn't mean it was a staple or that grass allergies are suddenly more common today than they were then.
And they were a different strain. George Washington Carver developed the modern varieties in the teens and 20s and then they become a more common "people food" in the 30s thanks to his marketing campaign. They were commonly eaten a bit earlier in Asia, especially China, but more than 200-300 year ago, nobody really ate peanuts so it's not like cave people had some amazing anti-peanut allergy diet that we've strayed away from (apart from not eating them in the first place).