Childhood Myths About Food

[Dana]

Re: the gum

We were told that if you swallowed you gum, it would stay in your stomach for 7 years. I didn't really like gum, and never thought about it too much, until, years later, changing the diaper of my then 2 year old, who had been the recipient of a piece she really didn't know what to do with....

[Pallee]

OK, This isn't a myth, it really happened to me, but it could be used as one to scare kids into keeping their belly buttons clean. We had a big apple tree in the backyard when I was a kid. Great apples, really tart. I ate them at every stage from tiny mouth puckerers to the big juicy sweet ones. When I was about 7, my belly button started to hurt. Getting out of the bath one night, I used 2 bobby pins to pry it apart and look in there and I found an apple seed that had sprouted! I pulled it out and have always wondered how far it would have grown. I checked my belly button for years afterwards for foreign objects.......(still do)

[BarbaraY]

Actually, it's spinach that makes your hair curly. My grandma said so.

[Fresser]

Actually, it's spinach that makes your hair curly. My grandma said so.

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Everybody knows that eating spinach puts color in your cheeks.

Remember this when you forget your rouge, ladies.

[daniellewiley]

I ate SCORES of orange M&Ms b/c I thought they'd make my boobs grow.

(didn't work...)

I tell my daughter now that eating protein will make her hair grow faster. I'm probably half-right, but I think I exaggerate the effect. Every morning she asks if it worked, and I brush her hair out (it's very curly) so it looks longer and say, "Yes! Look how long it is!"

My cousin used to tell us that milk made our muscles grow bigger. He'd drink a glass and flex his bicep simultaneously - my brother and I were amazed and would drink down our glasses right away!

[Darcie B]

Not quite the same thing, but I'm sure we all heard about the starving children in Armenia/Ethiopia/China etc who would be only too happy to eat he food we didn't finish?

SB (wondrers what ploy mothers in Armenia/Ethiopia/China etc used to get their kids to eat?)

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A show of hands: Did anyone really, truly, say to their mother, "Oh yeah? Name one!" when she told them this?

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No, but I did tell her to send the food to them!

[sazji]

Mom tried all sorts of ways to get us to eat bread crusts. They were where all the nutrition was (as if we cared). Ditto for heels. She told us she and her brother used to fight over the heel of the bread. We said they were both nuts then. As for the starving children in Armenia, she had gotten slapped as a kid for saying "then send it to them," so she didn't try that one on us! And we didn't have spinach myths because I liked spinach and was always disappointed because there wasn never more of it (mom having only opened one can...)

An American vegan woman told me the other day that meat stays in your stomach for two weeks before it can get digested and that's why it's bad for you. I started to say "wait a minute...things seem to go through me within 24 hours or less, but I was halfway through the sentence and she repeated, this time very firmly (with motherly authority), "Meat Stays In Your Stomach For Two Weeks Before You Can Digest It."

[FabulousFoodBabe]

"Meat Stays In Your Stomach For Two Weeks Before You Can Digest It."

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Where do facts like that come from? Another thing I was told as a child: that if you don't chew well before you swallow, meat will stay in your digestive system forever and that most people have 15# of undigested meat in them at any given time. And that Coca-Cola could take the paint off a car (we tried this once; didn't work).

I also didn't believe that my face would freeze when I did this:

[Milagai]

what about the ones about:

1. swallowing fruit seeds (e.g. melon) will make

the plant grow in your insides.

2. swallowing chewing gum would give you appendicitis.

and being indian raised in india, we were told to clean

our plates because of the starving children in the street.

they were a few in the street and we did try telling our parents to

give our food to them, but then got our necks firmly held

and food shoveled into our mouths.....

milagai

[chappie]

When I was young my Granddaddy Fred always told us "Eatin' greens is a special treat. It makes long ears and great big feet."

I'm not sure the allure of elephant ears and clown feet was a good way to get a child to finish his kale, but luckily I liked the green stuff anyway. My feet were abnormally large for a kid, too, but I grew into them.

[Lochina]

That quote is also from the Disney movie Bambi, and is used to get Thumper to eat the greens of the clover as well as the flowers.

[chappie]

That quote is also from the Disney movie Bambi, and is used to get Thumper to eat the greens of the clover as well as the flowers.

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Ah, so that's where he got it. I always love when people grow up thinking something their elders often repeated was original, only to discover it came from the magical world of pop culture. My fiancee used to talk about a song her grandmother and her made up that went "Playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree..." And then one day while visiting my sister in California she played a friend's radio show featuring old crusty out-of-print records and bang: there was the playmate song.

I got a good laugh out of that one, and brought a tape back as evidence.