I'm from India too, live there presently, and what follows is anecdotal as well. I first heard of lactose intolerance when my son became lactose intolerant at

I'm from India too, live there presently, and what follows is anecdotal as well. I first heard of lactose intolerance when my son became lactose intolerant at age 1.5. I also discovered then that the pharmacies were stocked with lactose-free milk substitutes (soy milk was comparatively harder to get hold of). They'd apparently been stocking this stuff for years. More surprising, the first time I heard of a nut allergy was when a friend (around the same age as yours truly, born sometime in the decade of The Emergency) said he had one.