 July 19th, 2010
12:30 AM ET
Kids say the darndest things. As it turns out, so do parents - especially when it comes to getting their progeny to pick cauliflower over cupcakes. The truth is, many parents tell big, fat food fibs to get their kids to eat their fruits and veggies and avoid sugary snacks. It's out of love, we know, we know. Still, we remain somewhat unconvinced that they didn't believe some of their foodie fabrications, too. We solicited our colleagues' and friends' best food-centric tales of Pinocchio parenting, and now, we're calling them out. (Please don't ground us.)
Parents tell you a food fib growing up? Speak with a forked tongue in the comments below. We'll share the especially outlandish ones in an upcoming feature. Meet a kid who's making some healthy decisions and taken his family's food life into his own hands and see what Tom Colicchio says about childhood hunger and obesity |
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Chocolate milk comes from brown cows ... I think Dad was responsible for that one. We thanked everyone brown cow we passed by on car trips.
I told my son that brownies were "mud pies" and that chocolate chip ice cream had bugs in it.
Growing up (until I was about 5 or 6 and figured it out), my dad would tell my sister and me that the ice cream truck was really a truck that came by to steal kids away – he just didn't want us asking for ice cream. Probably saved him hundreds of dollars and fights, thinking back on it.
My mother swore that drinking milk with fish, any kind, was bad, bad news. She never said exactly what would happen but the look on her face was so dire that to this day I will not partake of dairy and fish at the same time.
I used to tell my daughter to eat her vegetables because they are the color foods. If you eat them you will see the colors better. She always ate her vegetables and believed she could see the greens, yellows, reds and oranges a little brighter. There might be a bit of truth to it. Yes, I grew up in the sixties.
My daughter tells her son the same thing now.
My mom used to tell me that if I ate standing up, then all of the food would go down into my ankles....and I believed her!!!
My Dad, whose good friend and mentor as a youth–and also owned a local coca-cola bottling company– told us that anything we drank besides coke would rot our guts.
I used to say that the ice cream man was the whiner truck coming to collect whiny little kids. They knew I was joking...
My mom used to tell me that if I didn't finish every last grain of rice in my bowl (we're Chinese), those grains of rice will appear as pock marks on my future husband's face.
"If you don't clean your plate, then your future wife/husband will be ugly."
I eat every bit of food on my plate to this very day...
My mother used to tell us that the baby corn you'd find in Chinese restaurant fried rice was "shrunken" by a Voodoo priest in the same ceremony that he shrinks heads.
my mom has always said that pizza and ice cream are good for you- they both have protein! which is why we have ice cream for dinner at least once a week. haha
alas, can't wait until i move out and can eat what i want. i'll lose a freshman fifteen! on the other hand, i'll have to pay for it...
When I wanted to try something new, my mother always told me I wouldn't like it. Now I remind her of all the things I like that she is too wimpy to try!
We told our children that spinach and tomatoes were louder than carrots and peppers. We'd have crunch contests just so that they could prove we were wrong.
This is a good one!
Three triplets I babysat when I was younger were convinced that grapes were "magic beans" like in Jack and the Bean Stock. They would BEG for a grape before bed time because they thought it would make them grow bigger overnight!
I have convinced my daughter (granted she's 2) that a frozen Go-Gurt is the same as a popsicle.
but it tastes just as good!
My parents used a lot of these on us, so it's been very entertaining reading through all of these. My kids were small when the 'Land Before Time' baby dinosaur movies were popular. I always served them raw baby spinach leaves for dinner, and told them they were 'tree stars', the favorite food of the baby dinosaurs. The kids were so happy to have a pile of these leaves they ate them right up. They are 14 & 20 now, so they don't believe me anymore, but they still eat their spinach raw & say they will tell their kids the same thing.
I enjoyed reading everyone's post! when I was in Kindergarden we were having a picnic at school for kids and parents. some kids were teasing that only "big kids" weren't scared to eat the seeds of the watermelon we had been served! I ran over to tell my dad that i had been the biggest kid of all. he asked why and i told him about the seeds. he looks at me all big eyed and shocked and goes " oh no sweetie! if u eat watermelon seeds they will use the other food in ur belly to grow big and explode in there, everyone knows that! well the only thing that'll save u is if u poop em out first" I started to cry and ran to the bathroom, the picnic had long been over and i was still in there trying to "go"...my mom was not happy with my dad for scaring me like that..... but when i think of myself in the stall pushing and imaging watermelon pieces flying from my abdomen and exploding i still crack up.
Me: Why does Johnny's family eat steak all the time?
Dad: Well, son, other families just can't afford to have their meat ground up the way we do.
My parents didn't want me to eat candy when I was little, but I was always curious as to what it was my dad was eating, so they told me it was "cud" because they thought that would gross me out and would deter me from wanting any.
My mother told me one time that eating chicken wings would enable me to fly! She didn't say how many it took but I gave up flapping my arms while jumping off curbs after about the third meal worth of chicken wings. I still don't like'em.
One of my Granmothers told me quite seriously that I needed to eat my toast with the bacon and eggs to soak up the grease from the bacon. later I figured out that the toast was more usefull for sopping up the left over egg yoke stuff.
rules for makeing vegetables eddible.
1. Bacon grease ( chunks of bacon is much better ) is required to make green beans edible. It also works wonders for a number of other vegetables, spinach for one ( unless it's been stewed) .
2. RE: number one above. Ground black pepper in large quantities will take the greasy green beans to an entirely new level of culinary delight. i.e. tasty even. Ground black pepper will also make a lot of other nasty plant products at least chewable.
3. Man invented ranch dressing to make vegetables eatable.
4. Okra. Stewed or boiled is absolutely nasty. No amount of pepper will make this anywhere near tasty, not even with a slab of bacon thrown in.
5. Okra. breaded and fried or cooked in Gumbo is delightful.
6. profound revelation number one!
No matter how much you may dislike Pickles, they are after all the only thing you can do with cucumbers.
Marcus
Is there a way to make lima beans edible? Its the only veggie I absolutely despise...
Yes, Monika! Scroll up, I've given a good recipe in another thread. :)
No, not really. Bacon and pepper till it outweighs the lima beans is the only think I can think of Monika.
I always considered Lima Beans to be pig food, that way you take something nasty and turn it into BACON!. :-)
heh heh, why not just eat the bacon and pepper and skip the nasty ucky beans...LOL
When I was a toddler, I wouldn't eat fish. So my parents told me it was ocean meat and I ate it.
My dad told me all sorts of food would put hair on my chest. Luckily I knew he wasn't serious because I certainly didn't want hair on my chest.
I told my son that the ice cream truck was the music truck. His jaw dropped open when he was two and saw kids at the park getting ice cream from the music truck. I had to tell him the truth then.
My Dad would always tell us, "Take what you want and eat what you take" What a concept.
There was also "Don't eat more than 3 pieces of candy at one time or your teeth will fall out" usually saved for around Halloween, and which I believed for years because I snuck an extra piece, a Charleston Chew, one time and lost a tooth in it...LOL
My grandfather told me eating bread crust would give me the ability to whistle... 20 years later I still can't!!!!
Reading through these comments made me so happy. Pretty much all of them were funny, loving and happy! :)
When i was little, i loved my long hair and painting my toe nails. My mom and grandma would tell me that eating the bread crust would make them grow faster. My dad would tell me that eating peas would make me grow tall like him. My mom told me that eating lettuce would make me smart. I still believe it because my hair is still long, i'm 6 ft tall, and i'd like to think i'm pretty intelligent. :)
i forgot to add that one of my relatives told me that if you put ketchup or ranch dressing on food, it makes it taste really good. To this day, i eat brussel sprouts and asparagus with ketchup and zucchini and mushrooms with ranch dressing. It's actually become an inside joke between me and my cousin's. whenever there's a family gathering with food, if one of us says that the food "needs ketchup" it means that Grandma burned something or is using us as guinea pigs.
These are hilarious!!! I have heard JUST about all of these growing up! My parents were the worst with the lil starving kids in another country..when that didn't work, I got "There are lil people in your belly that are starving! Don't you hear them hollering?" OH MY! LOL
Why hot drinks cool us. We are mammals, and have a small range for efficient body temperature. So, in a hot climate, cooling too much can cause later heating up, but it is already hot out. So try heating by drinking a hot coffee. 1. The heat will have a cooling effect, because of our tight temperature control. Coffee for some stimulates the metabolic rate.
This is true, many drink hot drinks in the heat, but the lie is when it is hot, drink cold drinks, that sends you to the doctor for throat infections.
The folks would tell my sister and me that if you eat the last cookie, you'll grow up to be an old maid. Well, we didn't want THAT (whatever THAT was). So we would generously take the last cookie and give it to Daddy because we knew he was a boy and therefore could not be an old maid. Now I think it was Mother's way of seeing to it that Daddy would get an extra cookie.
Everyone tells kids food fibs. Kids are going to be kids, and you do whatever it takes, to get them to eat healthy.
Clean your plate, there are starving children in Africa, India, China ( and do not respond "Well put it in an envelope and send it to 'em" – cause that just gets you a smack on the back of the head).
"Coffee will stunt your growth". Funny thing, but there's an awful lot of tall people who were allowed to drink coffee as children.
A neighbor used to tell her sons that when the ice cream man played music that he was out of ice cream :) My mom always said she wished she had thought of that.
Oh, and my parents had to tell my brother that peas were green corn because they only veggie he would eat was corn and they wanted him to eat more veggies. That was until my grandmother told him they were peas.
My mom use to tell me that awesome meat on my plate was turkey bacon because I loved pigs so much growing up... eventually I figured it out, and you know what? I still love bacon.
Note from the editors - you're making us smile with these comments today. Thank you for that.
When my daughter was around 5, I told her white bread would give you cancer. She told me recently, she's 27 now, that she really believed that for years. At least it got her off white bread.
All my childhood, I was chastised for not liking turnips, a frequent dish in our home. Every time we had them, I was told, "Try them. They're delicious." Well, I never failed to find them totally unpalatable.
Twenty years after moving out on my own, I visited Scotland, where turnips ("neeps") are a common dish. I loved them! On my return, I visited my Mother and told her that at long last, I had developed a taste for turnips. She prepared some that very night. They were as disgusting as I remember them. That is when I realized the sad truth. I don't dislike turnips–I dislike my mother's turnips. I've never told her.
Coffee will make you shorter. Tea will clear up any cold if you pour enough honey in it. The candy in the vending machines are filled with bugs because they have been in there for several years. The popcorn at the movie theater has ants because they don't clean the popcorn case and leave the bags out overnight.
When I was little, my mom and older sister told me that the diet soda Fresca was "shrivel juice," and that I couldn't have it because I was already so small that if I drank it, it would make me disappear. !!
Haha! Now that's funny!
"Chocolate milk comes from brown cows."
Thanks Gramps...the kids in elementary school thought I was nuts. He was a convincing old man when I was a kid, and still tries crap like this on me to this day. I'm 23 now. Not sure what expects me to believe :)
Don't open an umbrella in the house, it is bad luck.
Don't wear galoshes in the house, it will make you go blind.
Do not put your shoes on the table, it chases the angels away!
Actually, the one about chocolate is true. It can cause zits to break out in certain people.
That's total BS, it's hormones that makes you break out not chocolate.
I've been thinking about telling my son that Cheerios are "doughnut seeds" and then planting some in the backyard ...
My mom used the one about eating bread crusts making your hair curly on my sister who refused to eat her crusts. Instead, I quit eating my crusts because I already had very curly hair and was already wearing a hat to bed trying to get rid of it (thanks to the era of Marcia Brady hair).
My dad had a "crack" in his tongue, and he said it was from eating TOO MUCH PEANUT BUTTER. I think I was 25 years old before I realized how silly that was, and completely believed that's how people got cracks in their tongues!!!
the whole sweating thing to cool yourself down and drink or eat hot items to do the same. If those that sweat like I do find this to work, then they would be walking around all day like they just got out of a pool. I am sure people would love to see that as I walk into D&D
When my boyfriend Erik was growing up his mother had him thoroughly convinced that ritz crackers (or some off brand) were "cookies". Whenever he asked for a cookie he got a cracker. It wasn't until a visiting friend witnessed his mother's deceit that he found out he was actually eating crackers.
But now, in his 30s, he still prefers salty snacks to sweet ones. So his mom's mission was accomplished. :-)
My parents taught me the importance of honesty at all times. After reading some of these things in the article, I can't complain in the slightest.
My mother always told us to eat bananas because they make you beautiful. Lucky for her we have a good-looking family, so no one proved her wrong. :-)
I used to be a very picky eater, and when I was sick I just didn't want to eat anything at all, so my father made up this story that really motivated me to eat – I would lie in bed and imagine the war taking place inside me:
Food is made up of little soldiers. When you're sick, enemy soldiers invade your stomach. To fight the disease, you need to eat as many friendly soldiers as you can so they can fight and overcome the enemy soldiers. The more you eat, the sooner you'll get better.
how bout this, with my kids we don't have dessert and when we do it is only on rare and special occasions otherwise besides a fruit roll up every now and again as a snack the only sugar they get is from fruit. and they don't beg for anything, I just say to bad so sad
My parents told me growing up that Malted Milk Balls were "adult candy", and that children were not allowed to eat them. They just wanted the whole box to themselves! I was probably 10 or 11 before I figured out it was ok to eat Whoppers!
While not exactly a fib, I loved the "There are starving kids in China (or xxxx you fill in the blank)". My thoughts was always "Well ship it to them then!"
My sister told me everytime a fly lands on your food, it throws up. To this day, if a fly lands on my food, I'm done!
I'm not sure about that, but it's probably best not to think about where they could have been before they landed on your food...
Flies need to put an enzyme on their food to digest it. Where is the enzyme? In their stomach. How does it get on the food? Well, use your knowledge of anatomy.
"back to the hot foods on a hot day – it is a well known fact that although sweating isn't pleasant and makes you feel "hot" (psychologically), sweating does cool your core temperature. Ask any East Indian..."
Eating/drinking hot food/beverages triggers your bodies reaction to cool itself off. It won't FEEL cool at first, but when you introduce heat to your body, your body says: 'Cool off now'.
Also, hot showers do the same (you feel cooler after getting out).
I believe the bit about chocolate and zits. This happens to me all the time.
Growing up, I heard almost all the ones in the original article. Eat because "people are starving in China" was a big one, too.
We also heard: Drinking coffee will stunt your growth.
My dad used to tell me that if I swallowed my gum, my butt cheeks would stick together! I loved this story, takes me back to the fun days of being a kid!
You have to try [insert never-yet-tried animal meat here]. It tastes JUST LIKE CHICKEN! (I've heard that about frog's legs, kangaroo meat, and alligator)
MY MOTHER ALWAYS SAID THAT DRINKING COFFEE AS A CHILD WOULD STUNT MY GROWTH! I LOVED IT AND I AM 5'8".
MY SON LOVES EXPRESSO AS A BABY AND HE IS 6'1'"
GO FIGURE!!!!
I don't think I've had this much fun reading thru posts in a long time!! LOL!!!
My kids thought that 6 M&M's were all that came in a pack, because that was all I gave them until they were old enough to count. When my son as about 3 he asked me if Broccolli was candy and I said yes! (This came about because I was a fat kid and I am a fat adult. Both of my childern are very fit young adults).
I am definately gonna have to steal this for when I have children. It's great!!!
I was only told to eat what was on my plate or I'd go hungry that night. That was no lie, either.
My mom got me to eat raw spinach by telling me it was "dark lettuce". I'm not sure why that made it taste better, but it worked for me, I am a huge fan of all dark, leafy veggies!
If you don't eat your vegetables, you will have to go to the doctor and get a vegetable shot.
My favourite was always "McDonalds (or insert other fast food chain) is closed for the day" even though I could clearly see children playing in there :).
To this day I will not eat tomatoes as my sister use to tell me they were apples to trick me into biting into them when I was young
I have been known to tell my children that superheroes eat their vegetables, and those are the source of their superpowers. They still don't buy it, but I keep trying!
My parents used to tell us that if we didn't eat it for dinner, it would still be there the next morning for breakfast. We ate it, if it was revolting enough at dinner, breakfast would be worse.
I told my daughter sliced cucumbers were green potato chips; raw asparagus spears were another kind of celery, spinach was just another kind of lettuce like iceburg or boston but i couldnt remember the name; she liked pork chops but wouldnt eat beef so all beef was red pork chops (which she ate) – basically, anything she wouldnt try because she didnt like the name got a change to a name she like – worked for years....
When I was in High School we had a little girl that lived next door. She was about 4-5 yrs old and loved to eat at our house. I like pretty much anything (weird things) and one day for lunch my mother and I were having pork brain sandwiches. This little girl came in and asked if it was chickem, we said yes do you want some? She said Oh Yes! As she was munching away and saying GOOD CHICKEM her mother came in and almost passed out when she saw what her daughter was eating! GOOD CHICKEM!
My daughter's aunt told her that her blonde hair would turn brown if she kept eating (dark) chocholate. It's been a week ... we'll see how long her new aversion lasts! Apparently her parents had told her this story.
I told my daughter with very straight hair that eating her crusts would make it curly. She even ate the heels and her hair did turn very curly!!
Eating cookie or bread dough will give you worms. I didn't care – it was too good.
Green beans are really whistle beans – eat them and you will be able to whistle – Didn't work for me
Is this news? This story was stupid.
You're stupid. Now go eat your veggies dumb dumb.
I'm sure there's plenty of doom and gloom for you to enjoy on another blog than "Eatocracy"...
My parents called yellow squash "Ice Cream Squash" and I ate it, because of the name. I still like squash to this day- and I am ashamed to say that I thought "Ice Cream Squash" was an actual variety of squash for the longest time, well out of childhood!
My mom used to slice potatoes thin and roast them. When they were served they were called "potato cookies"... what kid could resist?!
I was a very skinny child and my parents told me that if I didn't eat more "my back would grow together with my stomach".
I hated veggies as a kid–dad warned me that if I didn't start eating my vegetables, for Easter I would get a visit from the 'Vegetable Bunny', not the regular Easter Bunny who brings candy. Low and behold, Easter morning, basket full of canned veggies--I threw them across the living room. . . had to have been 4 or 5!
Awww that's just sad :(
Now that one is hilarious!! And it still didn't work??
The "Veggie Bunny" ... might have to try that one with my daughter! :D
My folks always told me that eating too much cheese would "plug you up"
This one is true. Too much cheese causes constipation. Look it up.
Was I brought up in the only household that wasn't told lies about food? She said eat it because I told you so and we did.
Of course we were not brought up to believe in the tooth fairy, easter bunny or Santa. My mother worked 3 jobs to raise 3 kids and her line at Xmas was always the same, "no fat man in a red suit will take credit for all my hard work".
Perhaps the reality was a bit deep but I don't understand all the lying to children about the stuff we don't need to.
Because it's funny and it creates memories :- D Like we all doing now. We're looking back at just how funny it was that we ACTUALLY believed these tall tales our family would tell us.
Geez. Don't be such a Debbie Downer.
I totally agree Jamie. Can you imagine how much LESS fun we would have had as children had we not been told about Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny etc.?!? And as you said, the memories make it all worth while!
My heart breaks when i hear that parents don't let their children believe in santa or easter bunny or tooth fairy, that is what being a child is all about, having wonderful memories, the pure excitement of "santa" coming. I have friends that have 3 children and they tell them that it is all lies and only because the mom had a sister that was heart broken when she found out santa wasn't real. OH COME ON! GET OVER IT! That is no reason to ruin the fun. I remember when i found out. My mom hid the fact from me until i was 13 (i don't know how she did it). But it was a neighbour that told me when we were shopping. Yes i am mad at her to this day some 20 years later, but only becasue i would have loved to get more exciting years out of it, not because it wasn't real.
The window for having real magic in your life is very small. Real magic is the ability to believe in the wonderful, the fantastic. That's why we tell kids fibs. All too soon will they learn how harsh reality can be. Let them dream! Let them believe!
At a family get together last week, my son wouldn’t eat his veggies. I took the opportunity to take a kind-hearted jab at the conservative hosts and said, ”Son, if you don’t eat your veggies, you will turn into a Republican”. I got the kind of reaction I expected, half a room full of jeers and half a room full of cheers. The little guy still didn’t eat the veggies though :-(!
My mom used to tell us that Liver was Dinosaur Meat. I've told my kids the same thing.
Ha! Awesome! :D
Not my parents tale, but when I was a kid I was told that peanut butter had rat poop and fly skulls in it. Supposedly there was a certain number of these items that were allowed in the peanut butter during production. I couldn't eat it for years and I still have trouble eating peanut butter/pb cups because of this. To be honest, I don't know if it's true or not!!!
All foods are allowed a certain, small amount of rat poo and bugs. Peanut butter is allowed the most amount out of all foods since the consitancy and color of peanuts makes it harder to detect those things.
The "Shamong Diner" in Shamong, NJ has the best Lima Beans, I often
get 2 orders.
My sister introduced her kids to "a new fancy kind of chicken called flounder." She got them to eat their fish!
Studies have shown that eating spinach does promote protein synthesis, and thus you can build muscle by eating enough spinach. However, the participants in the study had to consume about 1.5 pounds of spinach a day!
My grandmother used to tell me that eating raw cookie dough would give me worms and drinking buttermilk would keep me from going bald. My grandad was bald and hated buttermilk and I didn't like it either. Guess what? I'm going bald (but I never got worms.)
My mom had my sister & I convinced that if you ate in bed you'll get pregnant. We were about 10 or 12 before we learned the truth...
I made an omelet with eggs, tomatoes, spinach, and garlic. (Kids are training for triathalon.) I just told my kids this morning that garlic is good for them AND it keeps the vampires away. They didn't hear the "good for them" but was excited about the "keeping vampires way."
My grandmother – who was born in Russia – would always hide garlic in my suitcase when I went on a trip. This was to ward off "evil" (and vampires, presumably). She really believed this. And yes, her food had lots of garlic in it also :) I kind of miss unpacking a suitcase and not finding a bulb of garlic in it :(
I was told when I was six that hot dogs were made by real puppies by my babysitter's son, who was 12 at the time. When I finally felt ready to eat a hot dog (at 20), I made the mistake of watching how a hot dog is made on "How It's Made". I will never eat a hot dog. My Gran used to tell me that bread crusts will make my hair shiny, and I was told that carrots would make me see better. I have a two year old daughter and I'm definitely going to use some of these on her.
My mom would not let us eat sunflower seeds; she read somewhere that they kill your brain cells. Nowadays, I catch her eating them in her trail mix and tease her with, "Are you trying to give yourself Alzheimers?" LOL Luv ya mom but you know we just ate them when you weren't looking :)
From my grandfather (maternal), my mother used to have a trick where she would eat a brussel sprout and it would 'magically' come out of her ear. We would mash up brussel sprouts trying to copy this, suddenly they were gone. I am in my 30's now and my cousin just found out that her father wasn't the only one to pull that trick...
We also had the try eveything rule. I eat what many others find 'bizarre' and still believe there is food out there that I will love that I haven't tasted yet. I don't love everything, but I have a wide range of food I enjoy that spans aroudn the globe.
Also, my grandmother (paternal) used to tell us if we ate standing up we'd get elephant legs.
Funny, I haven't thought about that in a while...
If you like to try bizaar foods, try a oreo & doritio sandwhich. Take an oreo apart, put a nocho cheese dorito on one half then put the top back on. It sounds horrible but we ate them all the time as kids. I still love it to this day!
Grandmas said that eating raw cookie dough (or pizza crust dough, cake batter, etc.) will give you worms!
Sounds like my father. He thought we should/would like anything he liked and had to eat it – onions, chip beek on toast and anything else that came with gravy. But we were never served foods he didn't like or had never tried :) When he was away, which was seldom, we had rice sprinkled with brown sugar and milk or butter (more like rice pudding) and hot pies (pizza that was NOT considered a meal) for dinner. As an adult I realized I preferred Italian, Mexican and Chinese food over meat, potaoes and a vegetable (potatoes were not a side but a requirement so didn't meet the side of vegetables rule.)
one apple every 8 hours keeps three doctors away
That only works if you have a good throwing arm and can hit the target (i.e., doctor) with the apple while they are in the yard before they make it into the house (assuming it is a house call).
Also, I had a babysitter when I was a kid that insisted that eating too much white sugar would give you ringworm of the skin!
I told my daughter that the rows of gumball machines at grocery stores and malls were just decorations made to make things look for fun for kids. She believed it until she was about five!
Similar:) I told my daughter that the candy and gum at the supermarket checkout line was also "just for decoration." She believed me until she was about 4 or 5 and yelled at the top of her lungs, "Mommy, that lady is taking the decorations!!"
My father told us as kids that the tapioca balls in tapioca pudding were fish eyes. After trying it, we weren't deterred and he couldn't keep it all for himself. Total lie FAIL.
Ooh yeah, I've heard the fish eyes one before, too. hehe.
I was told they were fish eggs. To this day I can not stomach the look, thought, taste, texture of Tapicoa.
In order to prevent us from eating cereals with alot of sugar, my mother used to tell us that they were made from pigeon brains. Then one weekend, I had a sleepover at a friend's house and his mother gave us Fruit Loops for breakfast. I loved it. The following week I killed about a dozen pigeons with my pellet gun and brought them to mother to make cereal. She was horrified at first, but we both got a good laugh over it once she told me the truth.
That's pretty funny!
Haha, my mom used to tell me that sugary cereals gave you cancer so I wouldn't ask for them.
That's hilarious!
When I was a young boy, my mother told me that the moles and freckles on my skin came from eating too many hotdogs. Where did that come from?
My dad told us when we were little that Gatorade was made from alligator tears so we wouldn't drink his stash!
my great grandpa always said "if the eggs are too hard, put a little butter on 'em, that'll soften them up" and then he would say "if the eggs are a little too runny, put a little butter on 'em, that'll harden them up"
I heard the coffee will stunt your growth one from my caffeine-addicted mother. Even now, when I see tweens and young teens in Starbucks, I think they're stunting their growth
My dad got me good a few times (look up gullible in the dictionary; that's a picture of me) telling me that jalapenos were actually pickles (I love pickles but not so much jalapenos). He still laughs about that
This is kind of gross, but when I was little my Dad convinced me that McDonald's cheeseburgers were made out of worms. I was always so grossed out by the thought of it that I never ate a McDonald's burger until I was 19. Good job Dad!
My son whrn he was 5 was obsessed with the military. He was a picky eater but I could put his dinner on the table and if he didn't want it, I could say "That's what they eat in the army" and he'd eat it. Then there was dinosaur meat. That came up by accident – he asked me "what's this?" when I gave him a a hamburger (something that was hit or miss for him eating) and we had just been talking about his Jurassic Park T sihrt, so I said "A velociraptor." A few minutes later, he said in awed tones "I can't believe I'm eating dinosaur." So for about a year, when I gave him a burger, I'd tell him it was dinosaur if he didn't want it and he'd eat it ...
That reminds me – when my daughter was young, she was very picky about meat. And she loved the blue-tailed lizards that skittered through our backyard. Somehow telling her that it was lizard was on her plate, made her happy to eat it.
My mother told me zucchini were cooked cucumbers because I really loved cucumbers but did not like zucchini.
back to the hot foods on a hot day – it is a well known fact that although sweating isn't pleasant and makes you feel "hot" (psychologically), sweating does cool your core temperature. Ask any East Indian...
LOL!! I love all your post, but while we laught at all these, we have to be thankfull we all have somethiing to eat. I never had this kind of problems, my problems were different that all of you, my mom would tell stop eating all the food, or there will be kids straving in this house.....
" they wait until the cow dies from old age before they take the meat"
"Drinking coffee will stunt your growth!"
"If you eat too much butter, you will turn yellow"
"Meat DOES NOT come from animals, it's grown on trees in Malaysia." (they had to get creative to get me to eat meat!)
"Coca-Cola will turn your eyes brown"
And my absolute favorite came from my Minister Dad, "If you don't pray before you eat, you will choke on your food."
It wasn't until I was in college that I learned not everyone's parents told them that!
My father used to tell us to eat the fat on our slices of roast beef because that was the best part for you! He really did.
How about beans being the musical fruit???
Beans Beans the musical fruit
The more you eat the more you toot
The more you toot the better you feel
So let's have beans for every meal...
I bought my kids the animated show "Once upon a time there was life" on DVD. It has an episode showing what happens inside the body when you get scurvy. When they refuse to eat their veggies, I remind them of this episode and they are so terrified, they eat their vegetables. Muahahaha. I'm evil and horrible, I know. But at least they won't get scurvy! ;)
My grandma told me that drinking coffee when you're little will stunt your growth.
The twinkie story is not true, they unly last about 28 days.
Oh, forgot to add...
4. My boyfriends' parents told him that pizza is what caused people to get fat. It is "the most fattening food possible" and "is the cause of obesity." So... he doesn't like pizza. If I order it (once a month), he will eat 1 slice and then gorge himself with salad. Haha!
When I was a kid, I kept getting my Mom to buy me spinach to try, so I could be strong like Popeye. And she would, and she would cook it, and I would try it, and hate it. Every time. Love it now, though.
My favorite food story (not so much a lie), however, was at Christmas – early on, my parents convinced me that instead of leaving milk with the cookies for Santa, he'd really love it if I left him some brandy instead. After all, it was really cold outside, and the brandy would help him warm up more than milk would! So every year, at our house, Santa would get the usual cookies, and a bit of Dad's good brandy.
Re: Brandy - Aww, hehe, that is so sweet!
1. My boyfriend is 26 now and he honestly still believes chocolate causes acne. He refuses to eat it.
2. My mom said eating sugary cereal (cinnamon toast crunch, i always wanted it! :( ) would cause stomach aches and I would end up throwing up at school and embaressing myself. So, I never got to eat cinn toast crunch. I always had just plain grape nuts. :|
3. My Mom and Dad would make me sit at the table in front of a hamburger helper meal and I couldn't leave the table until I finished it. It would eventually get so cold and mushy my mom would just let me go to bed. I still won't eat that stuff to this day. I also don't like ground beef because of it. I just never liked the taste of ground beef.
My mother told me that saltine CRACKERS were COOKIES! I believed it for a long time too. My mother said she was so disappointed when I came home from a play date one day asserting that my friend had waaaaay better cookies than we did. So she had to she stop that charade.
Of course my mother told me a lot of other non-food related lies as well. She told me that bugs lived in my nose that would bite my finger tips if I picked my nose. She told me that if I cried too much I would run out of tears and need glasses, or even worse- go blind! She told me she had magical powers to make the windshield wipers work when she pointed at them (intermittent wipers I later learned). I could go on and on...
The gum one isn't true????? Seriously. Took me 25 years to figure that one out...
It wasn't in the US, but a host family of mine from abroad said that drinking water when you eat makes you fat. Which is why it's rude to drink when you eat a meal that someone labored to prepare for you.
My mom told me if I ate my mashed potatoes, it would make my boobs grow.
Well, I dunno if it was the darn mashed potatoes or genes but someone is correct here.
... here I thought I was so clever 'making up' the Ice Cream Truck/Music Man bit to tell my kids....
My cousins said that her kids would not want to eat the creamed corn I just bought for dinner. On a bet I said that I would find a way for them to eat it. So early in the afternoon I started to say to my cousin, within ear shot of the kids, that I managed to get lucky and found "special corn" at the store. The kids asked about it and Io said that it's very tasty and only comes around for a few months of the year, like egg nog.
Well guess who asked for more creamed corn and made me go back to the store the next day to get more!
I hated mustard as a child (still do) but my parents were convinced that I just thought I didn't like it. They once told me to eat the hamburger with mustard any way, claiming "You can't even taste the mustard." I asked them why they put it on the burger in the first place if they couldn't taste it, they didn't have an answer for that one.
Hmm funny that it was that important to them that you ate mustard(?)
I was a picky kid, my parents would do anything so they wouldn't have to alter all their recipes or make different food. It always irritated me. They were allowed not to eat certain foods but somehow my tastes were wrong.
I hated mustard too. My parents never pushed it, though they had no idea what caused it and neither did I. 20 years later I find out that my bestest ever friend at the time had had mustard thrown in her hair by a bratty kid at lunch, so she hated mustard from then on. Clearly, I picked up on it and have carried it throughout my life. I still don't like it, although you can convince me that a small amount of Dijon in things like pasta salad sauce is fine. But don't bring that yellow mustard anywhere near me. I hate the taste. Mind over matter!
My parents were way to busy, so I took it upon myself to eat healthy, and by healthy I mean sticking a sausage on a fork and cooking it over the fire, then rolling it in a tortilla.
My mom once told us mashed turnips were mashed potatoes. We had the clean the plate rule. Now, I loved mashed potatoes and got myself a large helping. Then i was told i had to eat all the turnips i had helped myself to, or they'd be waiting for my breakfast. I refused because my mom lied to me when she said, "put the potatoes on the table." We had a big fight over this.
We had a pet cat with beautiful blue eyes.......so I use to tell my daughter and son that their eyes would turn blue if they would eat their green beans !
Is the one about waiting 2 hrs to swim after you eat true or not? Im starting to think my parents just didnt want to take us swimming right away...damn lies!
my grandma used to tell my dad that the peel on cucumbers were poison. When he accused his new bride (mom) of trying to kill him. My mom laughed and said, "it's not poisonous....but it sure kept you kids out of the cucumber patch, didn't it?"
Awww haha! Thats a great one.
We always told our daughter it was the "music man" and not the ice cream man because he came around at DINNER TIME!!! Then of course one day my dad was over and he spilled the beans. Thanks, Dad.
Here's a few:
How about after you eat, you need to wait an hour before you swim, otherwise you'll get cramps and drown? (I guess in Cuba, it's three hours)
Or, that eating nuts before bed will give you nightmares?
Another one I've heard is that too much Mountain Dew will make you sterile.
When I was little I didn't like cheese. My mom had a bagel with cream cheese on it and I asked what it was and she told me it was "Bagel Butter" so that I would try it. It worked.
Also, when she was making cookies I would ask what kind they were she would respond that they were spinach cookies. Needless to say, I wouldn't touch 'em.
My mom told me for years that if you swallow gum it will lodge in your appendix and give you appendicitis, and if you go to sleep with gum in your mouth it will end up in your hair. It was years before I realized that, since she was a nurse, my mom knew full well that gum did not lodge in your appendix; I was longer figuring out that if you go to sleep with gum in your mouth it does not somehow migrate through the back of your head into your hair, it just falls out of your mouth. Either way I was obviously not the brightest kid in the world.
Gum can definitely get in your hair. With all of the tossing and turning, after the gum has fallen out of your mouth it is bound to end up somewhere. It's happened to me.
My father use to tell my sister and I that his beloved tapioca pudding was made from frog eggs (in the hopes we wouldn't want to eat his favorite dessert), and that McDonald's burgers were made out of kangaroo meat (so we would stop asking for it all the time).
Actually don't drink milk after eating at a crab/crawfish boil that will make you sick :(
I tell my nephew who eats junk all the time that if he keeps eating it, he'll get fat, get diabetes, and they'll have to amputate his legs and arms.
Oh. I forgot one I got at school. In elementary school (I started first grade in 1952) we sang a song to the tune of "John Brown's Body" that warned about the evils of caffeine.
First verse: John Brown's mother says that coffee is no good (repeat).
Second verse: John Brown's mother says that tea, it is no good (repeat).
my grandparents raised me, so i heard quite a few odd things about the way of the world and what was on my dinner plate. i think my favorite was
"children who don't finish their entire meal, get sold to the gypsies".
to be honest, being sold to the gypsies was a common threat for almost any bad behavior...
My mom was always threatening to sell us to the Gypsies at the slightest provocation. I also frequently tell my kids I'm going to sell them to the Gypsies. Once when my daughter was 4 she told some other children that she actually was a gypsie and I had kidnapped her from them. For some reason though she thought that Gypsies had tails, so she told them I had also cut off her tail to hide her true identity. I got calls from a few concerned parents that evening!!
I don't really have any that I heard, but I used one that got my son to eat vegetables and fruit. He was starting to eat candy and we were having a hard time getting hime to eat vegetables. So I told him "Do you know what's better than Candy" "Natures Candy, because it's sweeter and better." That's all it took. He eats anything and everything when it comes to fruit and vegetables. We slice up cucumbers and tell him they are cucumber cookies. Now my daughter though, we're still trying to find how to get her to eat them.
Swallowing bubblegum will make your butt cheeks stick together!!!
My Dad always told us if we swallowed gum it would stick to our butt hole and when we farted it would blow a bubble. He is now sharing this bit of knowledge with my daughter, nieces and nephews.
I think we might be related. Sounds like something my Grandfathers or Dad or Husband would say! Thanks for the laugh!
The only one my mother ever tried on me was her conviction that consuming too many cold drinks will cause a person to develop tuberculosis. That's very lame, especially for someone with a Master's Degree from the University of Houston!
My favorite one, amongst many, was that the ice cream truck that frequented our neighborhood was full of ice cream that was expired from the grocery store. Ya, apparently the ice cream man and the grocer were in on some conspiracy to squeeze out as much profit as they can from expired ice cream. It goes that the ice cream truck driver had hook ups at the local grocer and would wait in the shadows in the back and pay a deeply discounted price for gallons upon gallons of half melted breyers and edy's. I can't believe I fell for this scam. I ended up working at that same grocery store later when I turned 15 and ya, its not true.
Wow, creative parents but isn't that kind of complicated for a kid to follow? And if I really wanted ice cream as a kid, I wouldn't care! :-) A friend's parents told him that what the ice cream man sold had drugs in it and had killed a kid. In their neighborhood it seemed believable.
"Try it, it's chicken": It was alligator. Followed by uproarious laughter from my mother.
got that one on easter one year... it was rabbit
My mother did that to me too.
I use to tell my son that salmon was "pink chicken" to get him to eat it....he believed me until my mother stepped in one time and said that's not pink chicken....that's fish.....There ended the process of getting my kid to eat fish once in awhile...
My dad used to tell me that drinking coffee would stunt my growth.
I tell my kids (both redheads) that when I was pregnant with them I ate a lot of strawberries and carrots, and that's why their hair is red. If they eat them now then it'll keep their hair red.
I enjoyed the leftover vinegar and oil in the bottom of the salad bowl, and when I drank it, my mom told me one drop of vinegar would eat one drop of my blood. She was told that by her grandmother. We laugh about it now. It never stopped me, though.....
My mother used to tell us the only milkshake flavors that existed were chocolate or vanilla, because those were the only ones she liked. We were into our teens before we figured out strawberry was a flavor.
strange cuz eating too much chocolate does make me break out. good thing it has never been linked or proven. now lets explain how a cell phone transmitting through your head doesnt promote cancer but standing next to a transmitting antenna does.
I don't think my parents "lied" to us about food. They jokingly said the things about growing taller or getting curly hair or whatever, but we knew they weren't serious about the consequences, only that we needed to eat our food.
Eating a capon(castrated rooster) will make you sterile. Grandma had a whole list of these...
My mom would serve everything with vinegar. If we didn't like it we added vinegar to see if that made it better. We all still put vinegar on potato salad! For my own kids I hide my dislikes and let them try things. They love exotic fruits, all veggies and fish. I won't eat any seafood....
I remember waking up on the weekends to the awful smell of vinegar. My mother would use it to clean out the coffee pot. To this day I hate vinegar.
My dad used to tell my sister and I that the large plastic cup he drank from every night had his "back medicine" in it and we couldn't have any. We believed this for years. About 6 years agao (I'm 29) we found out those were his chocolate milkshakes!
My mom told me meatloaf would make my breasts big (I was severly lacking in this area at age 12). I ended up being a 'D' cup – to this day (I'm 34), mom claims it was the meatloaf...
My mom said that if you ate your crussies (crusts) you got big bussies. So. maybe it was the bread in the meatloaf. Problem was that she didn't warn me that the crussies could also lead to big bummies too!
My mother worked her b*** off over the stove the entire time i was growing up and complaining. While i did eat a lot of the things that were good for me she never made me eat something i didn't like. Now that she's gone and i'm on my own i eat almost anything. (except Brussel Spouts) That's what growing and learning is all about!
I tell my kids that gum or hard candy is medicine and they can't have any! I don't want them to choke on it! And I don't care what anyone says, sugar makes my kids hyper!!
My mother used to tell me my eyes were changing color while eating green beans. I'd eat them real fast and she'd yell, "Oh they're purple! Now they're GREEN!" and I'd eat them faster until they were all gone. :D
Filing this one away for the nieces and nephews. Thanks Kelly, that's a positive way to get them to eat veggies! :D
My daughter does not like chees by itself, and would cry if her food had cheese on it. For about 3 years we had to call cheese pizza "plain pizza" and tell her that the cheese was white pizza sauce. She gobbled it up along with lasagna and manicotti. She also loved ham, so we just called all meat ham. She ate "brown ham," beef, "white ham," chicken, or pork chops and "circle ham," link sausage or bratwurst. Both of my kids will try just about anything for a quarter. They have to take three bites to decide if they like it and we only pay for the first time.
There were seven of us kids growing up so mom always bought two whole chicken when we had chicken for dinner. My poor little sister...we (the older siblings...she was 3 or 4 at the time) told her if she ever ate 6 chicken wings in one sitting, she could fly. Of course, with the 2 chickens, there were only 4 wings. She would pester my mom to death to buy 3 chickens. I laugh about it to this day when I think about it.
When I was really young my older sisters used to tell me: "If you drink milk directly from the gallon you will have to get 30 shots in your stomach."
"Salt will dry your blood." This resulted not in less salt intake but drinking something afterwards to re-liquify my blood!
"Eating too much sugar will give you worms."
I remember a lady on the PTL Club extolling the virtues of okra for weight-loss. "Eat enough okra and everything else just slides right on through." Yuk!
Why does that not surprise me? lol
Gee I hate to be agreeing with someone from the PTL Club but actually I think there was some research being done on Okra for just that aspect... I don't think "everything slides right through" technically explains it but there seems to be some truth to that... not enough for me!
When I was younger, we used to visit family in Duchess Co, NY. One of the "treats" we got up there was called "Duchess County Ham".... later I learned it was venison, and they just didn't want to tell the kids what it was. :)
My parents didn't lie so much as tell scary stories–I hated drinking milk as a child (still do) and was forced to drink it with dinner every night. If I protested, my parents would tell me about how I'd be a shriveled woman with crumbling bones in a few years' time.
My parents just handed out the calcium pills after dinner. My mother worked with a woman who always drank her milk and had plenty of calcium. At the age of 80, she was hit by a car in a parking lot while she was crossing it. She BOUNCED OFF. She had some bruises but nothing was even sprained. I never had a problem taking my calcium after that (although I hate drinking milk, only cook with it).
I am 26 and my parents still use lots of these stupid lines on me (of course now I can ignore their advice!). Yesterday when I went to see them, I was told to eat sourkraut because it "will put hair on my chest" (and I am a girl). It always backfired when I was a child – which 6 year old girl wants to eat something that will "put hair on her chest? I guess my dad wanted a boy or something
We tell our kids that eating donuts and drinking milk shakes will make them slow. My 4 year old will ask for one and tell me that he is just going to have this one and never have one again. He sounds so much like a middle aged woman it makes me laugh : ) It works though, requests for "bad" food are withdrawn more than you'd think when they know there is a downside.
My grandfather used to say that peas would make our eyes blue and our hair curly. They are my favorite vegetable and I have very curly hair and blue eyes – I guess he was right (no way genetics have anything to do with those two recessive genes!) He also claimed that red beets would put hair on your chest (don't know why he thought that would work on little girls!). And my mom used to say we couldn't drink coffee because it would stunt our growth. Wonder if there's any truth to that one...
Eating chocolate will give you a brown stomach.
When my sons were little they liked gross stuff so I told them that Brussel Sprouts were really alien brains.
my folks never lied, but I couldn't leave the table until I ate my veggies.
I will tell my kids that when we have chicken sausages, it is "special hot dog." They eat them now even with spinach in them.
My mother told me that Kit-Kat factories were so infested with rats that they were allowing up to 3 rat hairs in each candybar. Also that Klondike bars killed children. Evil yes, but I am now a veggie-loving adult!
Have you ever looked into what is allowable in food (especially bug parts in candy bars?) There really are allowances for a certain number of bug parts and other scary stuff in almost every item that contains agricultural ingrediants. It's disgusting, but not really harmful.
My mom used to tell my brother and I that soda was like beer, it contained alcohol. If we drank it, she claimed, she and my dad "could go to jail for a long time for giving alcohol to minors." Surprisingly, this worked very well, and we wouldn't touch the stuff. When we saw other kids drinking soda, or ordering it at restaurants, my brother and I looked at each other knowingly, shaking our heads in disapproval and then nodding knowingly at our mother, grateful that she wouldn't risk being sent to prison just so we could get drunk on soda.
Molly, this is soooo hilarious!! I'll have to try this one. I imagined my 4 & 6 yr old giving each other a look...LOL
My grandmother used to tell me to sumo-wrestlers got so fat by swallowing their chewing gum. I still cant swallow my gum, even after twenty years.
I told my kids that broccoli were actually little trees. They were intrigued that they could eat trees and did so until they were at least 10.
They were baby trees in our house, too. My daughter is 10 and still refers to broccoli as baby trees. She knows they aren't, but that's still what she calls them.
Awww, I'm 29 and still like to call broccoli "baby trees." Still won't eat the "trunks," either. XD
That is fine until they decide to try other baby trees like maple, oak or pine. Not sure if those would be harmful but you may want to think about it.
food police at it again, who cares!
You care enough to read the article and to leave a reply.
Parents should care about what their children eat and should also care about being truthful with their kids.
This will help to avoid having unhealthy kids as well as kids that are prone to fallacy and myth.
So, if your child is ugly as a mud fence and asks "Daddy, am I pretty?" What are you going to say?
Mamaw, if you are a parent and believe your child is as ugly as a mud fence, you need the help, not the child.
My Mom used to tell us that the green spots on potato chips were sunburned and that made them poisonous.
I still break the green spots off of chips and will not swallow watermelon seeds.
Your mom was semi-right. Green spots on potato chips ARE sunburn but they aren't going to hurt you. IIRC, it's only if you eat green potato raw that there's a problem. Cooked, like a potato chip? No problem.
Mom would put mayonaise out in the sun so it would turn transparent so we wouldnt want it on our sandwich I still to this day dont really care for mayo
When my son was a toddler, we found he would eat anything that contained the word "ball", so he was served "okra balls" and "tomato balls" to get him to eat them.
This one got me laughing!
When I was very young my mother told me that saltine crackers were "cookies." A babysitter blew that one for her.
The comment about the "no thank you" helping made me remember something I heard on the radio. The female cohost of the morning radio show keeps a 6-sided die near her dining room table. If her kids say they're finished or they don't want something, they roll the die to see how many bites they have to eat anyway!
When I was wee, Cheerios ran commercials about how eating them would make you strong. I fervently believed in this, ate my Cheerios, and swear I was stronger than your average girl.
Kind of forked-tongue-in-cheek!
Powdered milk taste just like whole milk. Wrong.
My mom told me and my sisters that eating veggies would make us have big titties.
I hate McDonalds so I told my daughter when she was a toddler that Mc Donalds was for boys and girls cannot eat there. When she got older I told her that McDonalds sells fake meat so now at the age of 12 she NEVER asks to go to McDonalds and even if she is out with someone that wants to take her to McDonalds she tells them she can't eat it.
I've told my daughter the same thing about their meat. Scary thing is – I think we are right. I told her there was no chicken in their nuggets which is why they don't call them chicken nuggets but call them McNuggets. ;)
Actually you should be more concerned about what they've done to the meat to get it to the state you're not sure if it's real meat or not!
That's exactly what this article made me think of...how am I going to keep my kid from wanting McDonald's, or other terrible foods with great marketing departments? With McD's, the truth should work well enough. I always feel like if you lie about something, then when the kid is old enough to figure out you're lying, they'll rebel against it. I could end up having a 700-lb blob of McD's tumors living in my basement.
Before I was a parent, I'd hear other parents telling their kids that if they didn't eat their vegetables they wouldn't grow. I'd point out to the kids that as a 5'11 woman who never ate a single vegetable as a child, I grew just fine!
As a parent of a four year old now, I don't say that anymore. :)
Lutefisk on New Year's will bring you good luck... Never fell for it, have terrible luck. Go figure.
When I was little, the ice cream man would come by on his tricycle, bells ringing.
My mom told me he was the fish man – he sold fish out of the cooler on the front of his large tricycle. Worked like a charm until the day my Grandpa bought me an ice cream bar. I don't know that she ever forgave him for that
"Eating cheese before bed will give you nightmares. " I don't know if the cheese thing is true... but if I eat anything dairy before I go to sleep I have crazy and more vivid dreams.
My brother told me that dates were really just desiccated cockroaches and that calling them dates was just a marketing ploy. It was *years* before I was brave enough to eat a date.
I haven't heard the "cheese gives you nightmares" one. Instead the one I heard was eating too much of anything before bedtime gives nightmares. I think the all-time worst fib I was ever told had nothing to do with food: "If you don't go to bed now, you'll never wake up in the morning!" That scared the hell out of me as a kid (I know my folks didn't mean it the way it came out)!
My mother told my six year old nephew that her car is not allowed to go to McDonalds. He bought it.
we were always told that eating spoonfuls of sugar or sugar packets would give you worms...my grandma said playing in mud puddles would give you polio. i did believe that if i didn't eat everything on my plate when staying at a friends house that they would never have me over again.
well, during the polio epidemics, that wasn't unwise advice as the virus was often transmitted through water sources.
Too much cheese will bind you up.
Actually, this IS true. I know from personal experience observing how my body reacts to the food I eat. I have to be very careful re how much cheese I eat or I end up with severe intestinal binding.
I had two bean burritos w/extra cheese one time in high school...one for lunch and one for dinner...it was NOT pretty.
According to Wikipedia, Burger Chef was gradually bought out by Hardees. Burger Chef and Burger King are not the same company.
If you say you don't like onions, I will keep cutting them into smaller and smaller pieces so you won't notice they are in the food.
Too funny! That is exactly what I do.
I learned that one from my mom and still abide by it today! I don't mind the onion flavor, but I don't want to know I'm eating them :-)
And two hours later, I would throw your food up. Sometimes there's an actual reason people don't like things.
Projectile vomiting is a pretty big clue that something includes onions. I took a hammer to one stupid loser that did not respect my food requirements. If you try and kill me because you think you know better than I do I'm going to defend myself.
My grandfather used to swear that the strings on a banana caused cancer.
Fish is "brain food" and will make you smarter.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080709161922.htm
"Omega-3 fatty acids - found in salmon, walnuts and kiwi fruit - provide many benefits, including improving learning and memory and helping to fight against such mental disorders as depression and mood disorders, schizophrenia, and dementia....."
"They say tuna is brain food. I guess it's because it's got so much dolphin in it, and you know how smart they are!" – Marge Simpson
I always heard that its either the cockroaches or parafin in choclate that gives you acne, not the chocolate itself.
If you have roaches in your chocolate you need to start keeping a cleaner house.
Sadly, growing up in a house of animals, I would eat dry cat food when I was a toddler. To get me to stop eating it, my mom told me that if a human eats cat food, they will actually turn into a dog. Well, me and my toddler brain thought then that if I ate dog biscuts I would turn into a cat. So when we went through the bank drive through I would ask for a dog biscut and not a lolly pop. So I suppose I got her back for her lie... her embarrassment at the bank was enough.
LOL, my grandmother kept dry Meow Mix at her house for the stray cat that hung around there. I always wanted to try it because I figured it would taste like cereal. Never did, but even today, I still wonder sometimes. XD
Jen, it tastes like fishy corn. And almost instantly turns into mealy grainy ugh. Same with wet cat food except there's gravy that's a bit salty and the food is mealy grainy ugh to begin with. Yes, I was an adventurous child.
Sarah E, its too soon to tell if your aunt was wrong about broccoli; keep eating it.
And my stepmom always "seasoned" everything with bacon grease – salads, veggies etc. She was so adament about it I actually thought green beans were poisonous unless seasoned with bacon grease.
My great-grandma used to tell me, "Coffee makes your eyes black."
When I was growing up in Jonestown, this man told me "drink the Kool-Aid, it's good for you." I have a distaste for Kool-Aid to this day.
Dark, but funny.
Good one... I wonder how many people who use that (stupid) expression have an idea what it actually means.
I love the kool-aid and now that I'm dead and rotted away to bones I love it even more! I hate the little snot suckers that use that phrase for everything as if every minor squabble was life or death.
Satire can be funny but also misleading. It may help to separate Myth from Fact by more than just "[ ... ]". I got confused a few times as to what was myth and what was fact!
My mother worked her butt off over the stove the entire time i was growing up and complaining. While i did eat a lot of the things that were good for me she never made me eat something i didn't like. Now that she's gone and i'm on my own i eat almost anything. (except Brussel Spouts) That's what growing and learning is all about!
My grandmother told us drinking coffee would make our toes turn black. To this day I still can't drink coffee although I don't remember her toes being black.
I heard the same thing growing up. I think it's a southern thing, unfortunately.
if you eat the meat of the tail of a fish, it will make you swim faster (doesn't help if you don't know how to swim :( )
Make sure you eat all the rice on your plate, if you don't your future partner will have a pockmark for each grain you don't eat.
Anything good for you would "make you poop". Being regular was apparently very important in our household.
The one about turning into what you eat is not a total lie. My daughter would only eat carrots and yellow veggies when she was a baby. The lack of green veggies to balance out her carotene levels result in an orange tint to her face, especially her nose. Moral of the story..... to many carrots and not enough greens and you REALLY CAN TURN ORANGE!
Eating too many carrots can definitely turn your skin orange. I had a co-worker who was on some weird carrot diet and his palms turned orange. I asked him if he was a lot of carrots and he said yes. He had no idea that was the cause of his dis-coloration.
Carrots turn you yellow.
From what I've read the orange tint goes away if you start eating a more balanced diet. If you continue to eat the Carotene heavy diet you will eventually get really sick and possibly die.
Where I come from, no veggies ever put hair on your chest. It was basically a way of getting little boys to do things that are seen as manly (get it, grow hair on your chest). So, it was used most often with me to get me to eat spicy food (peppers, hot sauces, etc.). Come to think of it, it worked. I love very spicy food, and yes, I have hair on my chest.
LIVER! My dad had 0 negative blood (or whatever the rarest one is...) and the hospital was always calling (in a child's mind) and asking him to come give blood as there had been an accident, etc., so my mom would give him liver and onions afterwards. It only took one bite and I NEVER had it again, nor have I ever cooked it for my family...My husband's mother wouldn't let them go trick or treating on Halloween until they ate ALL THEIR LIVER!! That's child abuse!!
Haha! This is hilarious. Great post!
The rarest blood type is AB-. There are lots of us O- people out there, but we get hounded by the blood banks and hospitals because O- blood can be used for anyone due to its lack of antibodies. Otherwise, you have to match blood type, which can be dicey in an emergency situation. Put the wrong type of blood in someone and...well, you can Google that.
"That we have plenty to eat." A jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a loaf of bread. isn't plenty when you eat it everyday for a month.
Actually a large portion of the nutrients of a potatos actually are in the skins, that's not a lie at all, its actually really really sound diet advice. To throw away potato skins is nothing but wasteful – of both your money and your health. Broccoli stems are quite healthful as well, and again its NOTHING other then plain old throwing out money to discard them. You'd think at least 30 seconds of fact checking would go into an article linked on the CNN home page... or at least it should be named "how our parents tried to teach us to be frugal and practical" instead of purporting to be about untruths.
Key word they used: ALL. Maybe you should lay off the broccoli stems...I think they're making you cranky. In other news, my parents told me if I would go blind if I left rice in my bowl.
The US is going through both an obesity epidemic AND a financial crisis and CNN is telling people its a "myth" that the nutrients are in the potato skins and you think its broccoli stems making me cranky?
This is why Americans are fat and in debt. Because people get their panties in a wad over eating certain parts of healthful food and instead rely on over produced products manufactured by faceless corporations and filled with ingredients most people can't even pronounce.
I'm betting no one wants to sit next to you at Thanksgiving. Really Emily, you're not telling us anything we don't already know. Loosen up a bit and just enjoy the banter. Everyone's just having fun.
Here is my 30 seconds of fact finding a) Potato skins contain toxic compounds called glycoalkaloids that can cause headaches, nausea, and diarrhea if eaten in sufficiently large amounts and b) there are more nutrients in the broccoli florets than in the stem. Maybe you should lay off of the potato skins and stop poisoning yourself.
Wait, TPS... are you telling me you did research rather than give your opinion as fact? Weird.
Seems like I read that most of the nutrients of brocolli are in the florets, and very little are in the stems. I liked that one – I've bought just the florets since they've been offered that way.
I will peal the stems and slice them into sticks. Then I can use them as finger food or blend them in smoothies.
Yeah, I eat the stems raw sometimes. I'm sure they're also a source of fiber even if not the highest part in nutrients. So she has a point that you can make the broccoli stretch a little further without throwing away that part. I'm sure this is just supposed to be a light-hearted article but bottom line, yes there is misinformation about foods out there.
Who has their panties in a wad? Might want to chill a little.
So what you're saying is, if I start eating potato skins & broccoli stems I can pay off my credit card and lose weight? Is your planet taking applications for new residents? Mine's filled with fat, poor people.
You can't have any meat if you don't eat your pudding.
I think its the other way around
No Mike, it's actually a reference to Pink Floyd. ;-) Being English, not me but Pink Floyd, the "pudding" may pertain to Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pudding, black (blood) pudding, etc. Then again, it's Pink Floyd so it could have a totally satirical meaning instead. :)
You can't have any meat, if you don't eat your pudding! How can you have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat?!
how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat???
We ate a Burger Chef as well, now known as Burger King. An impressive story going from Chef to King. The only food myth I remember is my grandfather saying every year at Christmas, "You kids stop eating so much cheese, it will bind you up!"
That's not a myth. High protein diets do "bind you up" and high fiber diets, loosen you up (at least when speaking of bowle movements).
My parents used to give us calamari at restaurants and tell us it was chicken
I told my five year old daughter that McDonald's stopped making french fries last year, only apple dippers.
My mom use to tell me "McDonald's was sleeping (closed)"
We told my daghter that the pint-size Coke would keep her from gainng weight! Boy, was she ticked when she learned the truth.
Eat your beef stew or you will be spanked with a wooden spoon. Surprise! She wasn't kidding!
Wow, I'm somewhat surprised The Wooden Spoon had such importance in other families than mine. Ours were not necessarily just food-related punishers, however.
I've broken more wooden spoons....
Not only was it used for non-food related punishment. The worse part is she made you go get it out of the Kitchen drawer for her.
My folks actually had several wooden paddles and my Dad actually took the time to cut out handles for a better grip!
There were several of them stashed around the house, and YES we got spankings with them. They were called
"The Believers" because once the paddle came out, they made a 'believer' out of us. LOL. No, I was never beaten,
and No, I don't feel like I've been irreparably damaged. It didn't happen often, but when it DID you sure didn't make that mistake a second time. BTW – neither of my grown children have EVER had a spanking.
There are laws against that in most states now.
I was told crusts would give me curly hair- I was born with really curly hair and used to hate it so I didn't eat crusts for years.
My parents also did the "if you eat (insert fruit) seeds, a (fruit) tree will grow in your belly!"
frozen blueberries were "Grandma's special candy "(frozen blueberries really are amazing)
anything meat related that wasn't easily identifiable was "special chicken" (fish, calamari, liver, oysters)
"If you eat your dinner you'll get dessert!" so we'd clean our plates, only to be greeted with an apple or a pear or some other disappointing fruit. That worked on us for years. We never caught on.
On a cold day, eat oatmeal....it will "stick to your ribs". Kind of gross looking back at that. It would mean that oatmeal exits your digestive tract and coats your thoracic cavity....sounds dicey.
LOL!
As recently as the early '70s, the chocolate – acne link was actually a part of accepted science! The 6th grade was the first time they showed health films in my school district. It gave the basics about puberty and growing up and actually instucted us to avoid chocolates. We're not talking about an old wive's tale. We are talking about an AMA, US gov't approved film shown to a grade school class of a NY state school district (not in NYC) in 1973. Unreal.
My aunts told me plenty of food fibs: My favorite is that if I ate broccoli I could live to be 150 years old.
Another that I remember really believing is that if I drank water at dinner (instead of soda or milk – I was a milkaholic) I would have beautiful skin.
Drinking water will improve your skin!
Actually drinking water and other fluids (not cola) does improve your skin. It cleanses it.
Good one! I was told to drink my milk or I would not grow. (How did they know I desperately wanted my feet to reach the ground like grown-ups when sitting in a chair?)
Wow, I am truly impressed. I mean it. Congrats to CNN for actually getting the historical and scientific parts right. The bit about the RAF pilot is true, as are the bits about spinach and chocolate. Very rarely do reporters get deep historical and especially scientific information correct. Cudo's, guys.
And great job Lisa-your experience backs-up scientific studies infant on eating habits.
Now if they could only get Brussel sprouts to taste good-that's one taste I will never acquire-they always taste moldy to me.
Well, thanks! We're kinda research dorks over here at Eatocracy and like those...whaddya call 'em...book thingies more than the interweb (much to the chagrin of the people who share living and work space with us.)
glazed is sugar, brussel sprouts are almost edible.
You have to get them when they're young and tender and then steam them. Mmm! But it's hard to do, so I feel your hatred.
You're talking about sprouts, right?
I don't know about sprouts but lima beans are the worst food on the planet. Bar none. Now I suppose someone'll tell me lima beans fight cancer and keep you young and thin. (Even so, I still wouldn't eat them.)
Ooooooh, I am so with you. I can be adventurous with eating, there are just a few foods I don't like but the one I HATE is lima beans. Ick, blech, yuck! The only way I'd even consider eating them is if it was proven they fought cellulite, and even then I might decide that I like my dimples as is!
I'll eat lima beans no problem, but don't even THINK of handing me broccoli! That stuff even SMELLS nasty!
UGH! Lima Beans are FOUL! I don't think my parents ever did come up with a ruse to get me to eat those!
Oh that is the truth...I'll eat anything...I mean just about anything but lima bean are the worst. What are they? It's like chalk inside a crayon wrapper. Brussel sprouts are delicious if they are made right if not they're up there with lima beans. Dry and gross. I don't know what to do with a lima bean to make it taste good. If anyone knows I'm up for suggestions.
Everyone in this thread: This is not hard. Go to your local store in the frozen section. You should see: lima beans, baby lima beans. PICK THE LATTER. Trust me on this. Always choose baby lima beans. Now take them home. Put the beans in a pot and add water to cover by about an inch. If you are making the average-sized bag, take a third of a stick of REAL butter and add it to the pot. For more beans, use your best judgment about more butter. Turn the heat on to high, and add about 1tsp of salt (2tsp if using unsalted butter). Once the butter is melted and the water is boiling, turn it down as low as you can get it without turning it off, and leave it for at least an hour. Come back and stir every so often, adding more water if you find a good bit of it has evaporated. When the beans are quite tender, use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a bowl and eat as much as you like.
This ought to get you started on your lima bean journey. As for brussel sprouts, just get them young and tender and steam, then serve with plenty of garlic lemon butter.
Just to amplify a bit on the carrots bit - the pilot was John Cunningham, the top British nightfighter pilot of the early part of the war and one of the top scorers overall. According to C.E. Rawlingsley, one of his radar operators, it sparked the "Cat's Eyes" nickname that Cunnigham detested but had to put up with for the rest of his life. (He wasn't even particularly fond of cats) John Cunningham died just a few years back.
If you first cult B.Sprouts in half and steam them, then saute them open face down in butter with garlic and onion, you can almost choke them down. My husband likes them that way, I still think they taste like grass.
I would think that slopping butter onto something would defeat the purpose of eating the healthy food in the first place. After a certain amount of additives doesn't a healthy food become unhealthy?
Butter and additives do not go hand in hand. Butter would add a bit of fat but is better than using margarine with artifical trans fats and all kinds of additives, colors, flavorings etc. Don't be scared of butter. :-)
My son (16) and I both love brussel sprouts, specially if you cut the bottom bit off, boil till just tender, serve with fried bits of thick bacon, delicious!!!
Butter. Cook them the Emeril way with lotsa butter and it's a whole different experience. Although if they have such an odd taste to you it's possible nothing will make them taste better. Kinda like me and cilantro. Nasty stuff.
Cindy–does cilantro taste like soap to you? Congrats, you lost the genetic lottery. Your genes make it taste that way. True facts, Google it.
Colin, Cut off the stems and soak the sprouts in salted water overnight. Steam them until the color comes out then put them in a pan with cooked bacon and cheddar cheese and bake until the cheese is melted and the bacon is warm. I love brussel sprouts!
Try halving the sprouts and roasting at high temp with prociutto and a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. Yummmmm.
Wait, you cook the brussel sprouts? I just eat them off of the stem all nice and fresh. They taste a lot like grass stems.
Don't drink milk when you eat fish. It will make you sick.
This is true for shellfish. I used to be sick all the time cause i love drinking milk with lobster, muscles, etc. Then when i was told milk and seafood don't mix (except in choweder for some reason) i stopped getting sick. But normal fish like haddock etc, totally not true.
What a CROCK. I wonder why Lobster, mussels and clams are all served with cream-based sauces. Clams Casino with cheese on top, etc. I had salmon the other night in a cream suace with shallots and capers...
Sounds like a take-off on Kosher requirements of keeping meat and dairy separate...
Growing up, my brother didn't like beans of any kind...green, yellow, baked...you name it. One night for dinner, my parents served lima beans. My brother asked what they were, and my parents said they were "limas," intentionally omitting the word "beans." He didn't fall for it.
The only food my daughter won't eat is squash, so I always give her the little pieces without the seeds and tell her they are yellow carrots. So far, it's worked.
Patrick, I didn't like lima beans as a child. Then I went to my grandparents' house in Mississippi as a preteen. My grandfather was a farmer and my grandma cooks like a real Southern belle. Needless to say, after that I would eat lima beans, but only Grandpa's. Couldn't buy them from the store, not if you wanted me to eat them. Figure it had something to do with the small farming, lack of pesticides, and growing by season naturally. I'll eat store lima beans now that Grandpa's gone, but I still miss them.
My mother told me bread crust would make my hair curly. I only ate my crusts about half the time. That's why my hair is wavy. ;) (Has nothing at all to do with the fact my father's hair is stick-straight and my mother's is curly, what ARE you talking about.) Of course, now I like to eat bread crusts because often they're the tastiest, most flavourful part of the bread...
I'm starting my toddler early. Anything that's out of bounds is Hot. Candy bars, stove tops, dishwashers, cookies, edible or not, they're all "Hot!". We'll see how long he goes without developing a complex.
Careful with that one or once he realizes that cookies aren't hot he may figure the stove isn't either.
My grandpa would always jokingly say "It will put hair on your feet so you can sneak up on a blind man" He knew none of us ever believed it and he mostly said it for laughs, but it's something I remember and still kind makes me chuckle thinking back on it so it was effective in some fashion I guess. I am pretty sure it even got me to try somethings as well.
hahaha what does that mean?! I don't get it but it sounds pretty funny. Grandpas rock so much
My ma used to tell me that the burnt cheese and crust on pizza tasted like cookies. :P
1. The bruise on a banana is the sweetest part.
2. It's only the sweetest ear of corn that attracts a worm.
As a youngster, and growing up in a rural farming culture, we only had good healthy food choices. There was no coaxing needed to entice the kids to eat right, or to maintain a healthy mental and physical life style! This even held true for our inner city realitives. This culture was carried on down to my kids as well. No reason any parent should not know the value of a good healthy meal, and see to it that it is served to their kids.
Larry, you're great. I am standing and applauding. This is common sense, pure and simple.
I am probably too honest with my kids – we tell them protein is good for muscles, and fruit helps you go to the bathroom. And I also let them eat candy/sweets for dessert, but not too much! I also let them get ice cream from the truck – as I believe its a rite of childhood! My kids aren't overweight at all. I never make them finish their carbs at dinner – only the meat and veggies.
Yay, good parenting. You don't need to lie to your children.
Sorry, but carbs are good for you too, and meat can be bad as well. People have been saturated with bad info. There are good and bad carbs, and I wouldn't gibe my kids a chunk or red meat either....read a little!
When I was a little kid, and if there was some kind of dessert on the table and us kids wanted a piece but my parents didn't want us to have any, they would tell us there was rum in it. Lets just say a lot of cake and cookies had rum in it.
Fish is brain food
some fish are high in Omega 3 fatty acids .... which are very good for the brain.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080709161922.htm
Too funny! I'd get that one too and then ask, "If the fish were so smart, why'd they get caught?" Mother did not appreciate my astute nature sometimes...
I don't have any outlandish ones from my parents, but I do use some fibs with my own kids!
"mmmm that is really yummy, can daddy eat some? Oooh it's great! Try some!" (as i spit it out in a napkin when she doesn't look!)
That is the best response yet! LOL! That is so the truth...always had a good supply of napkins when feeding the kids! They are in their 40's now and eat stuff I would NEVER eat!
when my son was very young and would look suspiciously at anything new, I would say he had eaten it before and loved it. I got him to try a lot of different things because he went in with a positive attitude. Of course, at 18 that doesn't work anymore.
I always wanted to eat at Burger Chef because they were the first chain in our town to offer Kids' Meals. Mom told me they served kangaroo meat so we could eat somewhere else.
My gandma said they serve kangaroo meat at Ponderosa. She obviously never took us there...
Kangaroo is a nice lean meat
I agree – kanagaroo is surprisingly tasty. I was reluctant to try it at first but then I tried it and it's a really good meat. I have a craving for it right now. :)
" If you swallow the seed of a plum, you will grow a plum tree on your head."
Thanks mom..
That's FUNNY
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
that only works if you throw it at them. ;)
Well an apple a day never helped my gf- she has to see me everyday.
On the other hand, if I ate an apple a dya, is that a good excuse for me not to go in to work??
I guess I got the truth followed by the sad truth. My mom would tell me "if you eat your vegetables, you'll grow up to be strong and healthy". That statement would be followed by "you can't leave the dinner table until you eat ALL your vegetables". Then about an hour later I would cry because my brothers were having fun and I was still sitting at the dining room table.
I got that too. The big bug-a-boo was turnip greens though. I couldn't leave until I ate the stupid things. An hour later and I was still there. I finally slathered mayonnaise on them, it's amazing how much mayo it takes to make turnip greens palatable. And I still can't stand them more than 40 years later!
O, and I got the 'bread crust makes your hair curly' one and mom told me eating cookie dough will give me worms. :)
I always got... Eat the crust it makes you pretty
I have naturally curly hair and I always hated it as a kid. My sister had very straight hair and my grandfather told us that eating bread crusts would make it curly. I stopped eating crusts right then and there and have not eaten them for 40 years now :)
Parents should start their children out when they first begin eating solids on fruits and veggies rather than sweets. This allows the child to acquire the taste of the healthier foods. Sometimes it takes several times of the child trying the food for them to actually like it. Just don't give up. Have the child to continue to try it. You will know after a few attempts if he/she will acquire the taste. Don't just pass off sweets to your child as a meal just because he/she won't take the healthier food. Don't lie about the fruits/veggies either. Just tell them it will help make them strong & healthy. While my child has the occasional sweets, she would rather go down the produce isle in the store and pick out her favorites for dinner and dessert, rather than grab a candy bar or a cake. I started her young on fruits/veggies and she loves them.
Whoa Nelly. People are serving their kids sweets for dinner?
You must know some strange people if they are feeding their children sweets for dinner. I also did not feed my children fruits for their dinner, that was dessert.
I agree. Fruit IS dessert. Dinner is one protein, one starch (rice, potatoes, or pasta), 3 veggies. The meal has to be colorful, not all drab. Dessert is fruit. This combo has worked quite well for us.
I tell my kids asparagus will give them green pee. It's true, and it makes them eat their asparagus.It takes about four or five spears for a little kid, six for an adult.
Hahahahahaha, That is a good one ;)
Actually there was recently an article on this – I think it was here on CNN. Certain chemicals in the asparagus cause pee to turn green. Another one of those 'strange but true' deals.
Danielle, asparagus also makes your pee smell funny (provided you have the gene for that). Which can also be amusing to kids!
The crust on bread helps you to whistle. That's why birds sing so well, they eat lots of crust that people throw out.
My brother and sister and I were told that we would never be able to whistle if we didn't eat our peas. My sister and I did, my brother didn't. My sister and I can whistle. My brother can't. Something to be said for the power of suggestion.
When I was very little my mom told me you couldn't chew gum until you were 21. It worked for a few years. I stopped asking for gum!
My mom always told me that if I ate my vegetables, it would make my boobs grow bigger. Well, I didn't eat them then and I don't eat them now as an adult and I have a healty pair!!
Ohhh, can I see?
NICE!
So they're nice and MEATy now.
And thanks to a lack of antioxidants (which fresh fruits and veggies are loaded with) you'll probably develop cancer in your "healthy pair" soon enough! Good job dumba$$.
I think that in a light-hearted conversation about food, a comment about breast cancer is a little...uncalled for.
I keep telling my granddaughter to take her vitamins so her boobs will grow big. It will annoy her dad who prefers not to think she is a girl..
paprika has no taste -it just makes things look more attractive.
Sorry Barbara: Hungarian paprika has many different flavors, sweet, spicey, salty.
Um Brent... that was a lie she was pointing out.
My grandmother would never allow us to have anything to drink during our meals. She saved that for last...and usually it was KookAid which she said "causes worms in children". Didn't stop us though!
I like that. KookAid. A very appropriate name for a sugary drink.
Oops...that should have been KoolAid. I don't have the reading glasses on me and have to trust my fingers to do the typing correctly. LOL.
Ah, Brenda! You didn't eat your carrots did you?
Hmmm...all the potentiallly useful articles that COULD have been written about eating, childhood obesity, suggestions for getting children to eat more healthfully, etc., THIS is what was composed? I suppose it probably is the best one can expect if you don't need to do research, talk with experts, get info from successful laymen. If you don't have the motivation to write something constructive - call in to work! Many would like your job.
Cant someone write an article for entertainment? All you want to read about is sad stories? God, take a break and enjoy life.
I totally agree .... take a chill pill and laugh a little. Life is too short not to have some fun with it now and again!!!
Amen! Reading these little food lies has been highly entertaining. The world may still be going to hell in a handbasket but can't we laugh just a little along the way?!
A little laughter is good for the soul. Maybe we all need to laugh more.
Oh, lighten up!
As my daughter would say... "Take a chill pill"
So what did mom and dad make you eat that made you so uptight?
Good one.
Must have been LIVER!!
LOL
Wow. You completely missed the point of the article didn't you? Instead of relying on misplaced self righteousness, you might want to think of what the article does do: focus on the participatory nature of culture. Look at how many people have responded in this forum–these family stories make up who we are as a culture (or multiple cultures, for that matter). Whether you personally find them valuable or not is irrelevant. If you don't want to participate, that is perfectly fine. Go read The Lancet and stfu.
Right on. Alas, there's one in every crowd.
Just as I was thinking how refreshing it was to read a string of comments where everyone was having fun, along comes a party p**per. Your closing line had me laughing out loud.
I just heard on the news that negative people have a 48% percent chance of dying earlier than positive people. LIGHTEN UP AND ENJOY!
a light-hearted article that makes me laugh should have been censored, i guess?
NO FUN! NO LAUGHS! YOUR NEWS MUST BE SERIOUS AT ALL TIMES!!!
With all of the depressing news that is around, what is wrong with something that is a little more lighthearted?
It's called a 'puff-piece'... Something light and entertaining, w/o all the serious overtones of other articles. They do the same thing on-air to lighten the mood. It obviously caught your attention!
CAULIFLOWER MAKES HAIR GROW ON YOUR CHEST
Do you have hair on your chest Heather????
If you eat candy (or anything with a lot of sugar) it will make you hyperactive!
That's a lie????
Yes Rufus, that is a lie. Eating a lot of sugar makes you fat, not hyperactive. How many fat people do you know that are hyperactive?
When I took a psychology class, we learned that the whole sugar/hyperactivity myth comes from the fact that children often get to eat the most sugar when there is already other things in there environment that cause overstimulation. Think birthday parties and amusement parks.
Eating while lying down will turn you into a snake
That would just make me want to do it more!
If you don't wash your ears you'll have potatoes growing in them. I believed that for a long time. I'm till not sure it isn't true and, I'm 63.
Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was deaf in one ear due to rice, thrown at her wedding, which spouted!
Acutally, the rice sprouted!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliette_Gordon_Low
"When she was about 25 years old, Juliette suffered an ear infection that was treated with silver nitrate. This treatment damaged her ear, causing her to lose a great deal of her hearing in that ear."
This is partially not a lie. "Juliette had suffered from chronic ear infections. She had lost most of her hearing in one ear because of improper treatment. At her wedding, when she was 26, she lost hearing in her other ear after a grain of good-luck rice thrown at the event lodged in her ear, puncturing the eardrum and resulting in an infection and total loss of hearing in that ear." http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/history/low_biography/
My parents saved 'seeds' from veggies and would plant the next year. I liked to play with the seeds in the jars and for some reason put okra seeds in my ears...mom wouldn't let me play with them anyomre after the Dr pulled the sprouted seeds out.
Radishes will make you run faster
haha, This is my all time favorite one.
I knew a friend who put a kernel of corn in his ear and forgot about it. To hear him tell the story it was about 6 weeks later and he was having trouble hearing out of that ear. His parents took him to the doctor and low and behold, the kernel had started to sprout. When I asked him why he lodged a kernel of corn in his ear his reply was the classic, "I dunno, I was a kid."
Could be true. I've seen several 63 yo men who look like SOMETHING is growing in their ears!
Don't eat yellow snow.
Boiled okra is good. (gag)
Fruit Loops on a cold morning will make you get to school quicker.
Twinkies never get to old to eat.
Rutabagas is real food. (what the hell is a rutabaga anyway)
You keep that up and you'll go blind.
Funny! Never tried boiled okra because the first time I saw it the person next to me referred to it as "elephant buggers". That was all it took.
The Twinkie one is true. Someone nailed a Twinkie to the wall of his garage and years later is looked just as "fresh" as the day he'd nailed it up.
Actually, they start to crystallize. When I was in high school, another girl had a twinkie in her locker for MONTHS – it stayed fresh until the package got torn, then it started to crystallize.
The one about carrots is true, my parents would say "have you ever seen a rabbit wearig glasses?"
Yeah, Twinkies DO go bad. I bought a box and ate a couple of them. When I went to get another one (a good while later, say a month or so) there was mold on all the rest of them. I kept them around because I was goingt o return them to the store, but never got around to it – they went bad before the printed date.
An adult friend of ours had a children's themed birthday party when my daughter was about 8. His cake was made of twinkies and I said she wouldn't eat it. He was shocked that I was right. At the age of 24, my daughter still has not had a twinkie – thinks they're disgusting
Actually, Twinkies do go bad. They still look good on the outside, but I've seen one that was green on the inside. Ick.
Eating sugar from a packet will give you worms!
My mom told me that eating raw potatoes and sugar from the packet would both give me worms!
I remember my mom tried to pull the wool with the ice-cream truck once..."oh, they're not allowed to come down our street anymore". And then my dad walked in with a Fudgesicle. Pack of lies!
Eat the fat part of meat...it is good for you.
cooking something with tomatoes takes out the fat.
I don't recall my parents telling any fibs like this...jokingly my father would say the "put hair on your chest" about everything. They just told me to always be careful handling uncooked chicken because it can give you double pipe action.
Its true...
Double-pipe action. Awesome! I'm using that one!
"Eating burnt toast will make you sing better."
Ahahaha. Burnt toast was grandma's way of saying she loved us!
My grandmother swore that burnt toast would make you pretty - now I know I'm gluten intolerant, so no wonder it didn't work! My pre-teen boys still eat raw spinach and other greens because they acted out a story when they were pre-schoolers about being a giraffe who had to reach up high to get these goodies.
My partents used to tell me that eating rye bread would gime me dark eyebrows.
My mom would say eat three bites and if you still don't want it you don't have to eat it. Well, now i'll eat just about anything. The only thing I refused to eat was fatty beef which still turns my stomach.
My parents said the same thing. You can't say you don't like it if you don't try it. I will now eat pretty much everything and anything... "Bizarre Foods" makes me hungry sometimes. And on top of that, if I try something once and don't like it, I'll try it again at another time or place before making a final judgement.
I've done the same with my daughter and she is not a picky eater at all. She also has to eat everything I put on her plate before she can get seconds on anything. So, no extra mac and cheese until she eats all the the green beans and carrots. (We don't have the clean plate rule – just no seconds until she's already eaten what she was given.)
We did the same thing with our kids. My husband's mother had done that with him as well. My kids have always eaten what they were given, loved veggies and never had food issues. I hated veggies growing up – realized when I moved in with my boyfriend that veggies could be crunchy and not come from a can and discovered that I loved them.
We have this rule in our house, and as a result I have a kid that, if given the choice, picks grapes or tomatoes over ice cream. Hopefully she stays that way.
I need to know your secret!!!!
While I'm lucky mine usually chooses raw broccoli and cucumbers over sugary foods, I know I won't likely be so lucky with any more.
This was called a "no-thank-you helping" in my house..
I have tried this rule with several different kinds of sushi, and I have determined that sushi is not for me. But I will try just about anything else!
That's not a fib though.
Corn. It's pretty much considered anti-American out here on the Great Plains, but I don't like corn. I've tried corn on the cob, corn off the cob creamed corn, corn fritters, just about anything corn. I keep trying it but still don't like it. I'm 51 now, guess I can say I don't have to try corn anymore.
It's called the "three bite" rule in our house. The reason? The first bite they are determined not to like it out of spite and swallow so fast, they taste nothing. The second bite is because they still are mad at having to take the first bite, but the flavor actually registeres on their tastebuds. And the third bite is the only one of the 3 that is actually given a snowball's chance. We have 5 kids and this has not only cut down on the "picky eater syndrome" but also has helped me determine with 100% assurance that there is no need for me to waste the family food budget on asparagus or brussel sprouts!
what about "eat your vegetables,starving childrent in (insert country here) would die for those vegetables"
This one is likely true. Kids tend to be less picky when they are STARVING....
That's true, starving children probably won't be as picky but what I never understood about that statement/argument is how was ME eating something I didn't like helping THOSE kids?! I went to Catholic school so we heard it all the time, eat your whole lunch, there are children starving in Africa. The nuns didn't take too kindly to the response of well, let's send our food over there.
my uncle's girlfriend is from China and she laughs that he was told to eat his vegetables because children in China were starving. She says that growing up she was told to eat her vegetables because children in Canada were starving.
When I was a kid, it was kids starving in Ethiopia. My mom was told kids were starving in China. I've never used that with my daughter, so I don't know where kids are starving these days.
Teri, if you're somehow unaware of where children are starving in the world, I'd enjoy living in your bubble.
My best memory as a child is hearing my mother tell us that kids were starving in Africa. My older brother asked her for a box so he could ship it to them. I don't think he remembers much about the rest of the day.
It was always the starving Armenians with my grandmother, and I always offered to mail my portion of liver and lima beans to them. That never flew.
And to that the kid responds, "Name one."
I always told my parents I would pay the postage.
My parents told me when the ice cream man played his music, it meant he was out. You lie!
That is too funny!!
That might be the best one I've heard yet!
We still use that one every weekend. Works pretty well up until about age 6, when their schoolmates show up with treats from the guy who is supposedly "Sold Out".
We tell our kids it is the dancing machine, and when we hear it go by everyone has to stop and dance – they are 2 and 6, sure it won't be long until they catch on!
Eating soup on a hot day will actually cool you down.
That's so funny – I never heard this outside of my family. My grandfather swore by the same principle and would drink boiling coffee in triple-digit Texas heat!
Seriously??? Old man, caffine, and triple digit heat spell heart attack...
I worked at a coffee shop, and customers would say this when they ordered hot coffee on a hot day. We repeated it to sell more hot coffee. I think what it does is triggers you to sweat faster or sweat more, thereby cooling you down.
I thought this was true. Isn't it why people in very hot climates eat so many spicy hot foods, i.e. chile peppers etc. It cools the body?
Negative. People in hot climates often eat spicier foods because using spices originated as a way of preserving food and keeping it from spoiling in hot climates. Alternatively, very cold climates often feature more bland food since they could just freeze food.
my guess is they eat that because hot foods can make you sweat, and sweating cools you down.
It's like going outside on a hot day when your AC goes out and coming back inside to mildly cooler temperatures. It feels cooler.
Spicy foods have capsaicin which acts as a pain reliever and makes you feel good by releasing endorphins. Eating an extremely spicy chili will release a lot of endorphins which will offset any uncomfortable feeling like being hot, like how alcohol makes you feel less cold.
Something that is just hot temperature wise will just raise your core temperature and make you feel hotter, you need the capsaicin found in chilis to get the endorphin high.
People in hot climates eat spicy food because the spices hide the flavour of putrefaction and help to kill the bacteria already living in the food.
I figure people in hot climates eat spicy foods because it thins the blood and makes you cooler. Similarly, I figured the food in the north was so bland and heavy for the opposite reason: thicker blood makes you warmer.
You guys are funny. The reason people in the warmer climates things like peppers is because that is what grows natively in their climates. So they used it to make food.
"Spicy foods have capsaicin which acts as a pain reliever and makes you feel good"
Wrong! Capsaicin acts as an inflammatory in humans. It's one of the main components in OC spray used in law enforcement. Have you ever been sprayed by OC spray? There is no pain reliever in it and it doesn't make you feel good.
@joe: Actually, alcohol does not make you feel less cold. Alcohol causes dilation of blood vessels in the skin (which accounts for flushed faces), but this dilation is responsible for heat loss in the extremities. Normally, vessels would constrict to conserve heat, but this is a defense that alcohol "undoes." However, if you're drunk, you just might not notice that you're cold...
@ Matt It is in fact a pain reliever. I know it sounds counterintuitive but it's actually used in the treatment of a lot of pain. It does release endorphins which cause a feeling of pleasure aka "Chili high". You can google it and find out for yourself.
Again some food scientist should weigh in, but I learned that because the soils of so many tropical (rainforest) countries are (Laterite) and poor in a number of mineral nutrients, and as a consequence of so much sun vs temperate climate plants, many of the plants used for food in these regions have 'tougher' fibers in them and that the addition of the hot peppers (Capsaicin) actually increases the capacity of the body to digest them.
Matt, I hope you never develop arthritis. Capsaicin, which is in peppers, is indeed a wonderful pain reliever, especially for joint pain. Why do you think your tongue and mouth tend to go numb after you've eaten spicy food? Think.
Actually, that's probably true. Anything that makes you sweat will cool you down. Evaporation removes heat from your body. That's why in places with hot and humid climates, people eat chilli pepper.
Andagain,
Yes, chile makes you sweat so in a hot dry climate it puts your cooling system into overdrive and helps lower body temperature.
Thanks, tct!
Ed, I have heard that argument but you are wrong.
Thanks, CCF!
They just had a story on the local NPR about drinking hot tea in hot weather. Seems your body spends energy cooling it down, which makes you feel cooler. If you drink cold drinks, your body puts out energy to warm them up.
My guess is that it warms the inner body temp thereby making the surrounding air feel cooler. Just a guess.
Absolutely true. In warm countires like India we drink hot tea during summer to keep us cool.
When we feel an external temperature, our brains are actually feeling the difference in temperatures between the body and the thing we're feeling. A little experiment- fill 3 glasses with water. put room hot water in the cup on the left (not scalding, don't hurt yourself), icy cold water in the cup on the right, and room temperature water in the cup in the middle. Using two different hands, place a finger in the hot water and a finger in the cold water. Wait 30 seconds and then place both fingers in the room temperature water. To the finger that was in the cold water, it'll feel hot. To the finger that was in the hot water, it'll feel cold. You're grandfather's not wrong- by raising his core temperature with soup/coffee, he changes the outside temperature his body thinks it feels. (But I'd bet he started sweating like crazy!)
My neighbor had her kids convinced that green beans were a snack because she always treated them that way. They would beg for them like icecream. When I baby sat I always hat to promise not to tell their mother I let them eat a whole bag.
My parents convinced my sister that shrimp toast was deep fried french toast. It was the only thing she ate when we got Chinese food. One day my aunt let it slip.
As I understood it, (Pls correct if wrong), The body needs to bring bio-fuel up or down to relative body temperature to process, so eating warm foods/liquids on a warm day allows the body to actually dump heat in letting it cool to digest as opposed to having to spend energy bringing it up to temp. Thus the desrt countries offer you hot tea...
Like a hot steamy shower on a hot humid day.
When you drink or eat something cold, the body needs to expend energy to warm it up to a temperature at which it can digest it. Using that energy is likely to keep you warmer, as you're using energy. When you drink or eat something warm, your body doesn't need to do anything to properly digest it, as far as temperature goes and that cuts out an entire step which uses energy.