 July 21st, 2010
06:00 AM ET
On Monday, we asked one simple question: Did your parents tell you any food fibs to entice you to eat or skip any foods? And good grief, did your parents tell you the darndest things. Yeah, it's out of love, but wow, Mom and Dad, are your pants are on fire! We've amassed a few of the over 500 food fallacies below, but first, a few mealtime myth busters.
- Eating too many carrots can turn you orange (or at least a muted yellow-orange color): Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, a highly pigmented compound. An extreme excess of carotene in the bloodstream will build up under your skin, causing an yellow-orange discoloration (mostly evident on the bottom of the feet and palm of the hands). To get rid of the harmless orange hue, just lay off the carrots and other orange vegetables (like sweet potatoes) for a bit. - Hot, spicy foods on a sweltering day will cool you down: Fiery foods raise your body temperature slightly, bringing heat to the skin's surface and causing you to sweat. This perspiration will ultimately cause your body to cool down by evaporative cooling (temperature reduction through the evaporation of water). - Spinach makes you strong, but not that strong: Spinach was originally selected as Popeye's power source because of a German study which mistakenly attributed the vegetable with ten times the iron it actually packs. When the mistake was corrected in 1937, Popeye had already been gorging on the stuff for years and it was too late to backtrack. - Chocolate doesn't cause acne: 1950s dermatology books made the claim that chocolate causes acne, asserting that because chocolate is rich in fat and sebum (oil), consuming chocolate would cause the sebaceous glands to be affected. No studies have been able to show any association between chocolate and acne. To the contrary, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently reported that the flavanoids (antioxidants) in dark chocolate may actually help regulate sebum production, thus helping with acne. - Gum doesn't stay in your stomach for seven years: It's true that gum is indigestible, but it passes through the body's waste system like any food would. And on to the comments. Do you know the ice cream man?
Tastes like chicken
Not so white lies
The meat of the matter
I feel pretty, oh-so pretty
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If I asked what something was in the little-kid tone of "I'm not going to eat that", I was told what it was, and then: "If you don't want to eat what I make, then you don't get to eat."
She wasn't lying.
Very similar to my grandma's: "What are we having for dinner? Please and no thank you."
I'm so grateful for them. Really.
My mom used to babysit some kids of a guy my dad used to work with, and the little girl always wanted pancakes – well, my mom who was very busy with me + two other kids, just made French Toast and told her that they were square pancakes!
When I was really little my mom as a joke told me that coffee makes your feet stink. Well one Sunday I was at church and went up to the ushers and was talking to them, and I noticed each had a cup of coffee in their hands. I told them that they shouldn't drink coffee, they asked me why, and in my 4 yr old voice, I piped up "Because mom says that coffee makes your feet stink !" They nearly fell over they were laughing so hard, and me being 4 then I didn't get it. It wasn't until about a year later that mom finally came clean and told me that it didn't do that. I still laugh to this day thinking about it. I'm curious to know what my brother's telling his two daughters, if they don't eat their food. I know with my one nephew, he'd eat just a little bit and then say he didn't want the food any more. My then husband would look at him, and tell him he wanted to race to see who could eat faster. Nothing better than a challenge from your fav uncle to get you to eat up. So I had to play the referee/cheering section, and our nephew beat his uncle. I had to do the same thing for another nephew, only I was racing him and one of his sisters wanted to join in. The oldest sister didn't want to feel left out, so she joined in, and the 4 of us had a contest to see who was quickest. All 3 kids soundly beat me (as I wanted them to), and their parents seemed pleased and amused that I got all 3 to eat up.
My dad would also tell me when I was a kid, that he could always tell what I had eaten, if I opened my mouth. He'd had a flashlight, and act like he could see into my stomach, and say something like "Yep ! You definitely ate your dinner ! I can see it !" Also when I was little, my mom was trying to teach me that I could jump into the pool with floaties on, and I'd be okay. Well I wouldn't do it, until she mimicked a commercial we'd seen earlier, where the parent promised McDonald's french fries. So mom said "I'll buy you McDonald's french fries" and I leapt into the pool. Mom had to keep her promise. Also when my brother and I were kids, if we were in the same room with dad and he was hungry, he'd have us put our ears to his stomach, and tell us that the growling was from a lion in his stomach. Us being the dummies that we were, we believed him, and we'd tell anyone who listened. Took us a few years before we figured it out.
My son loved pickles, but wouldn't eat cucumbers. I told him they were just pre-pickles and never had a problem getting him to eat them again.
I was told quite a few minor fibs growing up. It didn't harm me and often it got me to eat whatever food was available at the time. Watermelon seeds grow in your belly, crusts have the most vitamins, spinach makes you strong like popeye, coffee will put hair on your chest and turn your toenails black, kids in china are starving and they wanted the food I had so If i didn't eat they might trade me in on a chinese daughter instead, etc.
My son declared that he didn't like scrambled eggs anymore when he was around 4. So I mixed in some chopped up bacon and told him I got the recipe from Batman. He still prefers scrambled eggs with bacon in them and at 16 still calls them Batman's scrambled eggs.
Often I would tell the children something new was something really disgusting just for fun. They'd eat two servings of Hot Zombie Juice with grave cheese with gusto, it wouldn't have been as interesting if it was just plain old broccolli and cheese soup. They would often stand in the kitchen while I cooked trying to think up the best name for it. They are almost all grown now, and we still talk about how much fun renaming our food was. :)
I tell my kids the truth – eating too much candy, candy, or any sodas will make them short, fat and stupid (i don't bother with the diabetes, as they're too young to know what it is...)...they've yet to ask me why everyone in the USA is fat, but i suspect in the next two years they will notice and ask...it's a good thing we speak Chinese, so they can keep their comments from offending the lard***es...hehe...
My mother would always tell me to eat stuff because "it will put hair on your chest." Apparently I wanted hair on my chest as a little girl because I would eat it.
Also, she would tell me about the starving children in Ethiopia or some other African country who didn't have food. I always just wanted to send them the food.
i always show my kids some youtube videos how cows, pigs and chickens are treated in animal factories, that keeps them from eating meat, works like a charm !!
My mother, God bless her soul, never lied to me about anything. And that is a recipe for raising a person of integrity.
Back in the fifties,I was told that eating dandelions made you pee in bed.Now,why should anyone want to eat dandelions?
It honestly wasn't my idea. Our small son absolutely refused to try cole slaw. My husband looked him right in the eye and said, "I don't know what your problem is. It's just cabbage ice cream." My son, then about age 4, dug right in. It's been a salad favorite with him ever since. Although he caught on to the truth within a short time, he liked it too much by then. (It didn't help that I was choking with laughter everytime I thought about it.) Today, as an adult, our son snickers about the deception. It was the only one we ever pulled on him to get him to try something.
I was never told Veal was a term for baby cows ;/ I was also told the black watermelon seeds, if swallowed, would grow in your tummy but the white ones were okay to eat.
mine parents told me i am always hating the mcdonalds and this way winning! until 15 year old i never try this foods
I was about 8 and swallowed a peach pip. My two elder brothers told me a peach tree would grow out of my ears, but Mom had a special medicine to take care of it. So they fed me the medicine – laxative. When Mom got home, they told her the joke. She said: "Funny, hey, well, then you can also join in the fun!" She fed them the rest of the laxative. And she was right – it was fun watching them fighting for turns on the toilet. (Sometimes a single mom just has to have a strong hand).
My brother in law swears that if you eat watermelon while hungover it will kill you....
Nearly every woman I know thinks diet pop will help them lose weight, but the more they drink the fatter they get. In fact, a documented side effect of Aspartame (Nutrasweet) is weight gain.
The biggest "lie" that parents tell, isn't so much something that they say. It's actually their omission of the truth. Parents don't tell their children what hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, etc. are and where they come from. Little kids don't have a clue.
Well, even calling some of that slop "food" is dishonest, don't you think? It doesn't fit any of the definitions of food in my American Heritage Talking dictionary.
My mother used to tell us to eat the crust on our bread because it would exercise our teeth.
My Dad used to always say "All Dogs Smell Their Own Meat." I don't think I ever really realized what he meant until I was 28.
i can't remember all the lies my mother told me about food and everything else. she made sure we knew if we didn't eat all the food she made for us, within 24 hours, it would go bad by the next day, so she froze everything or threw it away. we grew up with "accent" in all of our food because it was good for us. if we shared food we would surely get some disease and die. when we made stuffing out of rock hard bread we had to tear it instead of cutting it because people don't eat stuffing cut with a knife. btw, we were also told if we touched concrete before it was mixed it would eat our flesh, all the way up to the elbow. it goes on and on...
Crystal Gale used to tell me that donuts would make my brown eyes blue
Dad told us boys to always eat Brussel Sprouts as it would make our "thing" grow and hang down to our knees. What a liar Dad turned out to be...
My grandma use to tell me to eat burned bread crust, so i will be able to see very far away, like a city near by :-)
If you eat watermelon seeds, roots will grow in your stomach and vines will grow out of your ears.
Somehow my sister got the idea that eating cheese would make her boobs grow bigger.
Mom made liver for me once, she dressed it up as though it were a chicken fried steak and told me it was a chicken fried steak. That one didn't work, but I was shocked.
Coco Puffs were really rabbit poop.
Tapioca pudding had fish eggs in it.
My mom told me that dinuguan (a Filipino dish) was chocolate meat. I ddin't want to try it until she said that. When I realized she duped me, I told her that it wasn't chocolate. She asked if it tasted good, and it did, so I kept eating it. BTW, it is a rich spicy dark gravy of pig blood, garlic, chili, and vinegar. Think of blood sausage or black pudding in a saucy stew form.
This is so stupid its hard to believe it's true, but it is.
When I was about five I got Mother to buy me a can of spinach after seeing Popeye on tv. I ate the whole can and ended up on the toilet all night. That was near 50 years ago and I haven't had spinach since. I hate it.
My mother always warned us that each time we burped, a little bit of our stomach lining got torn. I had this feeling that my stomach needed sewing. And she warned us also that potatoes grow in dirty ears.
I have a boyfriend who grew up with a mother who was a bit neglegent because she was into drugs and alcohol...She used to make him liver, but she continued to call it steak. He won't touch actual steak because of that memeory. Poor guy.
The crusts of bread will make your hair curly.
If you swallow seeds whole, they'll grow inside your stomach.
God knows what would happen if you ate the crusts of bread that had seeds in it.
my kids wouldnt eat meat unless they thought it was something really cool. i would tell them alligator, groundhog, possum, snake....it was a real interesting conversation at parent-teacher conferences when the teacher had questions. they are grown now and still think its funny.
Being quite poor my mom used to cook a groundhog for super that she would shoot herself every sunday morning while we were at sunday school and tell us it was roast beef. I hated roast beef for thirty years (it was really tough to chew). And the fool who thinks that if you only offer someone limited food they do not like that they will eat it rather than starve is way wrong, I could sit in the school cafeteria with a whole tray of food and not eat any of it no matter how hungry I was because none of the food was anything I would eat period (I tried). I told many a cafeteria lady if they thought it was worth eating they should eat it because there was no way I was going to eat it. To this day I and my sister are extremely picky eaters.
My older sister (who knew *everything*) swore to the one about bread crust making your hair curly, and even now, I think of that literally every time I eat bread. Also, Turkey Tetrazzini = "Turkey Tetrachloride". When my daughter was small, she thought tartar sauce was sour and made foods "tart-er".
Wait a minute, that hot drink on a hot day to cool you down actually works?! Man, I just realized two things!
a) My grandma was right (though not about the "try it, you'll like it/love it")
b) NCIS (the t.v. show)- Gibbs drinks coffee. On hot days. And says it keeps him cool. So t.v. does not lie!
My mom used to say to eat the bread crust because it had all the vitamins. I was in college, and telling the story to my professor when he pointed out that that made no sense: the bread crust was made of the same dough as the rest of the bread. It was the first time I questioned what my mother told me about bread crust. And the truth shall set you free.
It's so funny how these "food fibs" carried on to many different families. Everyone can relate to atleast one of these. I remember hearing these more from kids at school then my parents though.
When we went to the beach my sis would always seem to drop her sandwich in the sand. My dad would brush it off, and tell her it was good for her gizzard...
My dad told me that romano cheese was ground up toe nails.
Hahaha! This reminds me–a man I used to date would call Parmesan/Romano cheese "stinky-feet-cheese."
My mother once told my sister that swallowing Watermelon seeds would make a Watermelon patch grow in her stomach... My sister just about went hysterical...
My grandmother always told me if i drank Coffee i would grow a beard.
Here's one from the other side of the world – the Japanese will often leave eggs sitting outside the refrigerator in stores and in their homes, which of course makes us Westerners' toes curl. You'll get food poisoning if you don't put those in the fridge, we say. Nonsense, they say, eggs don't need to be refrigerated! So which one is the myth?
For the record, when eating raw dough, here it's not the eggs that they say will make you sick – it's the raw flour!
eggs will keep for months at room temp.
i live in Mexico and the eggs are kept out of the fridge in all the stores i've been too, including the walmarts in guadalajara....i was weary at first, but got used to the idea,its never made us sick
I recently heard that eggs will keep at room temp as long as something called the "bloom" is not washed from the shell. I haven't taken the time to research the validity of this statement, but I do know eggs can be safely held at room temp. A little something I learned from my mother-in-law about 15 years ago, altho' she never explained why. Has anyone heard or know about this "bloom" theory/fact? Now I'm more curious....if I learn anything new about this, I will surely post it! :)
My mom used to tell us that eating anything blue (candy, icee, popcicles, etc) would give you cancer. Maybe that's why I still don't like blueberries.
My mom and my grandmother used to tell me I shouldn't drink coffee because it would make me stupid. I think about it everytime I make a cup of joe.
My mom told me that bread crust was the healthiest part of the bread; but thanks to my grandma's homemade loaves with the honey and butter on the crust, I always loved bread crust anyway.
There was a story among neighborhood kids (from someone's mother) that if you swallowed your chewing gum, it would wrap around your heart and make you die. We took this very seriously and never swallowed our gum!
My dad always told us that eating onions would grow hair on your chest. Too bad all of dad's kids are girls!
My mom got me to drink prune juice as a kid by telling me it was black orange juice. Very clever – it worked!
My ex-wife's kids told their younger sister once when she swallowed tomato seed that she would grow a plant in her tummy and it woudl comoe right out her belly button, that night, if she didn't eat a whole stick of butter before mom came home. Mom got home at about the 3/4 stick mark and the little girl started bawling her eyes out because her mommy came home too soon and she didn't want a tomato plant growing in her tummy and out her belly button.The boys where like 5 and 7 and the girl was like 3. I still laugh when I think about it. One of the best things to come out of that marrriage!!
We call Waldorf salad, Wart Hog salad and Eggs Ala Golden Rod, Eggs All Good and Rotten. It just makes it more fun.
Growing up Dad made scrambled eggs with ground meat in them and told us it was brains. To this day we don't know if he was messing with us or not, not we'll either of us go near eggs with ground meat in it.
Why lie to kids and try to trick them? The simple, straightforward approach is easy for them to understand and works well. My mother, being both no-nonsense and averse to lying, had a simple way to get us kids to eat whatever was served. If any of us refused to eat part or all of our dinner, that was OK. Of course, it also meant that we went hungry. No loading our plates only with one or two things we liked or grabbing snacks after dinner. And definitely no whining allowed! The result was that we were not food fussy at all and able to enjoy a wide variety of foods. I am still that way today, something for which I am eternally grateful.
I can't reemeber any food mythjs, but my parents told me that if I played with my belly button my legs would fall off. To this day I cannot stand to have anyone mess with my belly button, my kids think that it is hilarious to try to poke me in my belly button. I have 5 younger brothers and they all still make fun of me about it.
My roommates son was 5 and woudn't eat an apple with the skin on it, so I told him that the skin would make him a better baseball player, he now eats his apples with the skins on them; however, i tried that again this past summer (a year later) with something else and he said, no apple skins do that..... he's 6 now...and a great kid..
i was told that eating 5 bars of salted butter with 6 bacon strips and 4 krispy kreme donuts and potato wedges while gulping down my burger with a fried egg and chocolate milk shake would make me a little fatter. gee i believed all that nonsense.
My parents liked to tell me that the crust on the bread had most of the nutrients, so I'd eat it!
It took many years until I realized it was just the "burnt" part.
My friends love liver and when they had kids they wanted them to eat it so they called it "foie de veau". That worked well and the kids ate liver for years until their youngest daughter came home from french class and announced to her older brother that "foie de veau" meant liver. On that day both kids stopped eating liver forever.
My dad told my brother and I that Kielbasa was "Space Food". He took a capsule of Benedryl, dripped some water on it and put it in the microwave for 5 minutes (much longer than the attention span of a 4 year old, even for space food). When we walked away, he took out the pill and stuck in the Kielbasa. When the microwave beeped we came running in and thought the pill had turned into food!
Hahahahahaha!!! That's a good one!
People. These were not lies. We believed it was true.
My mom told me that if I ate it would make my breasts bigger. I never really believed it, but I did eat all my veggies just in case it was true.
Did it work? ;) ;)
Don't mix pop rocks and soda, your stomach will explode!
I tempted fate...and it was delicious.
I remember this HUGE scare in the late 70's, was it? Early 80's? All the playground kids were terrified!
My Pop Pop told me that if you drink pickle juice, you'll grow hair on your chest........! I'm a girl and didn't want hair on my chest that's for sure!
This article considers the lies parents tell children in order to get them to eat. However, Americans carry a pathological appetite for deceptive food into adulthood and drive a major market demand for "engineered" food products. Artificial flavors, textures, and colors dominate the average adult diet, and synthetic substitutes (Olestra, Quorn, margarine, etc.) designed to simulate the flavors and mouthfeels of traditional foods have become all but impossible to avoid. Adults love to pretend they are eating meat when they're not, sugar when they're not, fat when they're not. My children will be taught the truth: that Quorn is made from a vat-grown soil mold and is NOT "pork cutlets;" that margarine is made from synthetic oils produced by the petrochemical technique of catalytic hydrogenation or interesterification; and that the people who like to fool themselves with such products have immature eating habits.
I absolutely agree that we as Americans need to reevaluate our foods and habits but there is something you miss. If we were to go back and eat the foods our grandparents told us lies about, we would be much better off. A kid is a kid and should have an imagination. Overwhelming them with chemicals and processes is a bit much. Restoring ethnic food is whats needed!
When I was a kid, I loved learning about the realities of food. For instance, how Fruit Loops are colored with azo dyes derived from coal tar. Now how nifty is that??! A filthy combustible black rock–basically ancient compost that has had the bejesus squeezed out of it for a few million years–is boiled to get the "juices" out, then baked into your Fruit Loops until they're bursting with technicolor deliciousness!
Tell that to your kid, and watch Junior suddenly find shredded wheat, rutabagas, and arugula to be more to his tastes.
No story a parent could make up would possibly compete with the entertaining reality of our modern diet! The next time Grandma bakes cookies with Splenda, don't miss the opportunity to teach Junior about organochlorides and how they sometimes taste really good and sometimes–just sometimes–come with nasty trace congeners like dioxins that will turn your body into a sack of knobby tumors faster than you can say "mmmm!" and smack your lips!
carlwilllis... arent you just a happy person enjoying life or what.
I thought we were here to share fond, childhood food memories? Most involving our parent's humorous deception to get us to eat healthy foods. Doesn't mean we're NOT teaching our kids the dangers of consuming processed foods......talk about a buzz kill.....
Way to turn a lighthearted conversation into your own soap box of condemnation. Geez, what a joykill.
Some of us americans were raised correctly. Margarine was a dirty word in my house, we only ate butter on our bread. We also cooked with a mess of veggies and fruits grown from our own garden. I think grocers are cycling back to fresh, organic food low on additives and such. So try and choose your words better than making generalizations.
A "joykill," huh? (Personally, I thought my addition was just as lighthearted and fluffy as all the rest of this mid-day palaver.)
Cait, if you're exempt from the generalizations I made in my critique of the "average" diet, then the scorn (such as it is) is not directed at you. It's actually that simple. So....at ease!
carlwillis–most of us here are well aware of what you mention and do our best to avoid processed foods and maintain healthy diets for ourselves and families, that's WHY we're here. So I guess you're kind of "preaching to the choir." I'm sure there are more serious and appropriate threads here where you can show off your education regarding processed food. Your posts have very dark and negative connotations and some of us are here trying to have a good time. Your attempt at being "lighthearted and fluffy" failed miserably, hence the "joy kill" and "buzz kill" comments. You're probably loads of fun at a party, aren't you......
My Mom used to tell me that you couldn't mix mango and milk, because it'd make you very sick.
My mom had to come up with creative names to get my brother to eat foods because he was so picky. There was "hockey soup" (beef barley, named that because there was a hockey player on one of the bags and he loved the sport) and "twisted sister elastic supper, with baby buttered breadwiches" which was basically twirly noodles with sliced bread on the side. A "Mickey Mouse Sandwich" was a grilled cheese.. and so on. It was a lot of fun. We still call them that and it's 20+ years later.
My Dad always told us that he had to WALK five miles, BOTH ways, UPHILL to school in the winter, carrying a hot potato from the oven to keep his hands warm as he walked and the the potato became his lunch. He also always told me how lucky I was to live in a land of plenty. He was right-I miss him <3
It was no secret that I loved, envied even, my mother's curly hair as a child. I was quite the picky eater and absolutely hated bread crust, among many other foods. So she would tell me that she liked bread crust so much as a child that she would even eat the ends of a loaf and that was the reason for her curly hair. After so long of following her 'advice' and no noticeable change to my hair texture, I finally asked her why she told me that. Her mother used the same trick. Haha, my mother never thought to question my grandmother because her hair was always curly! I wonder how many generations back this information came about.
I'm surprised that I don't see one of the classics – Milk makes you strong.. by making your bones stronger.
I've also used playful "reverse psychology along the lines of "you are not allowed to eat any vegatables! If you eat vegatables, then you'll grow more and I'll have to buy you another pair of new shoes / new pants!" works every time – even now when they are older and really know that I'm kidding... they will still "sneak" a veggie from the counter as I prepare them :)
Not trying to be inappropriate, but my mom used to forbid me from eating eggs leftover from the night before because they supposedly made your pen0r bigger.
Cauliflower is just albino broccoli. Ha, hilarious.
when i was younger i would not eat eggs and the only way my mom could get me to start eating them was to tell me that they were special chicken eggs and from then on i loved eggs...
My grandmother used to tell us that bread crust makes your hair curly. Well I don't mind the crust of bread, and I have very wavy hair. (My mother always make me keep my hair short as a kid.) Everytime my grandmother comments on how I'm the only one in the family that doesnt have thin, straight hair we all laugh and say its because Im the only grandchild who ate the crust of my PB&J sandwiches as a kid! She still claims she never tol d us that...
My girlfriend convinced her twins that bagels were doughnuts; worked until their first sleepover when the REAL doughnuts were served...
Any meat my middle daughter when she was little, didn't want to try i would tell her it was chicken since she loved chicken but the problem is now that she is 15 she knows that it is not but now she refers all meat as chicken like chicken is the word for meat...
but it worked she ate all meat since she thought it was always chicken... it go to the point when she was older if we were having pork or beef i would have to tell her it was Pig or Cow since she would always say chicken. we laugh about it all now..
My Mom told me scores of food lies:
1. Too much parm cheese on spaghetti will make worms inyour stomach.
2. Adding chocolate syrup to milk kills all the vitamins in milk.
3. Marashchino Cherries are perserved using formaldahyde and many more.
There was a figurine made in the 80's and it was a little girl with a harp sitting on a cresent moon. My grandma used to tell us that the moon would take us if we were bad. I believed it becuase of that figurine. She would place it where we could see it. And at night I always thought the Moon followed me.
I don't know why people lie to their kids about food-or anything for that matter. We don't lie. My daughter is 5. She's allowed not to like something, but she has to try it first. She knows that there are good foods and bad foods, and she knows whats in them and how they help her body. We grow our own garden that she helps with, and this had led to one great thing-I have a great eater, but she IS allowed junk food as well. The only thing she does not touch is soda, and thats partly me and partly her. She doesn't like the carbonation, and I don't really want her to have it any how!
...and then you have the second non-cooperative one. Or the third...
People get tired. One is easy. Did the same thing with the first. Then the first one corrupts or mocks the second one. All it takes is one 'ewwwwwwwwwww' and the whole thing can be shot. That and the older one brining home contraband. Or that birthday party...
I used to have it all together. Then I gave birth again. LOL
My dad used to tell me and my brother two different stories for brussle sprouts. For my brother it was that if he ate them he'd grow hair on his chest. For me, I'd grow large breasts. I ate them when ever I could when I was younger. Now I can't stand them. I ate so many of them I got sick of them.
I am from Indiana, and when I was young I would not eat broasted potato wedges until my mother told me that the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team ate them before games. Subsequently, I tried them, loved them, and still do. That was 20 years ago, and to this day, broasted potato wedges are called "Hoosier Fries."
My parents didn't give me sugar as a kid – never had it until I went to school and that busted everything. They had me convinced that broccoli was a dessert! Also, I loved artichokes as a child, but didn't find out about the heart until I was a teenager! My parents would just tell us that all of the leaves were gone, so go play, keeping the best part for themselves!
My son goes to great lengths to protect the heart of the artichoke. People laugh when he begs for fresh artichokes at the market. He is a 4 year old who knows the good stuff!
That's so good. I wish that my parents did that for me so that I would actually like eating healthy. I eat healthy for the most part, but I definetly know that broccoli is NOT desert. haha.
Ma told us the really small pieces from a certain fried chicken franchise were actually pigeons from the park. Eyuuu
When I was a kid I would have meltdowns about what was being served for dinner (as an adult I've learned that I don't hate food, I just hated my parent's food), even if I didn't really know what it was my mom was describing (I guess my instinct was that if it wasn't something obvious like hamburgers or hot dogs that it would suuuuck). One dish that I apparently loved was seasoned ground beef with elbows – though I would have a fit when my mom would describe this as what we were having. Her assurances that I actually loved the dish she was describing fell on deaf ears, so she decided to name the dish "Harry", so I would always remember it. She also made a Greek-ish version with cinnamon, oregano and nutmeg seasoning, which she called, you guessed it, "Aristotle". 35 years later and my whole family still calls these dishes by their "mom name". Man, for an only child whose parents never hugged her or told her they loved her (and in fact told her she was an only child b/c she turned out to be too much trouble to handle any others), she had some mad instincts and skillz as a mom. Man, I miss that broad, she was one in a million.
Hi Dan. I got to say I love your story. I think it's awesome that you noticed that about your mom (being an only-child). I am an only child myself and I think I have the same characteristics. I'm sure you were a great son!
Ohhh that is so sweet. Love the story.
My wifes grandmother tells the whole family that they will die or get really sick if they eat chocolate in the dark, especially in movie theaters.
lol my mom used to tell me to eat my peas and beans cuz its would make my hair grow long and beautiful i only didnt figure it out till like 5 years ago and im 22 hahaha sly but hey it worked cuz i ate those veggies and my moms frind used to etlls us if we licked our lips too much thery'd fall off...lol chapped lips
My grandmother would occasionally fix breakfast as the evening meal. One night she gave me some scrambled eggs and told me they looked different because she was using a new recipe that called for using flour in the eggs. About a week later she told me the "eggs" were actually beef brains!
For some reason I decided early on that sweet potatoes were not something I wanted to eat unless they were done with the marshmallows and brown sugar trick. So I am back home for thanksgiving after joining the navy and was complimenting my mother on her wonderfull punkin' pie and how it was the greatest punkin' pie she had ever made. she looked me straight in the eye and said "I haven't made a punkin' pie in twenty years son". Turns out all those punkin' pies had been sweet Patato pies. Ya know, sweet pataoes arn't that bad after all!
My mother used to tell me that if I ate raw cookie dough, the mother hens who had laid the eggs in it would come after me. We lived next to my grandparents' farm – this was a viable threat!
My 5-year-old believes that McDonald's hamburgers are made of "butt meat" and that their playgrounds are covered in herpes (my husbands universal word for germs). Fun until he announces to a room full of people that he doesn't have herpes.
I tell my son that raccoons poo on the playgrounds and the food is "vacant food". I don't know if this counts as a lie though.
LOL!!!!! "From the mouths of babes....." Too, too, funny!
My mom used to tell us that venison was "grama's special meat". Years later she told us what it really was when we saw Grampa's deer hanging in the garage after hunting. I do the same thing to my daughter when I tell her that lamb chops are baby pork chops
I knew that whole gum-stays-seven-years thing didn't sound right. I just always figured if my stomach acid could disolve tough steaks, how could gum last long?
We where told eating raw potatoes would give you worms.. and for wahtever reason, zuchini bread was called squid bread – maybe the adults didnt want to share with us kids, but to this day I call it squid bread and its delicious!
I was told that I would be able to whistle if I ate my bread crusts. Not True!!! I still can't whistle.
My grandmother would always tell me that if I ate the crust of my bread it would make my hair curly.
My sister said that too! It didn't work for me though.
My dad told my little brother that eating burnt toast would put hair on his chest. It scared me from eating it!
My mom got my brother to eat liver once by telling him they were 'little steaks'.
The girl next door to me in the dorm told us to soak our boobs in dishwater to make them grow. I never tried it because I was afraid that laying face down in it would drown me.
My parents always told me that eating carrots would make my hair curly. I've been eating carrots for over 60 years, but it still hasn't worked!
My grandaughters first grade teacher told her that eating the crust of her bread (something she would not do) would give her curly hair (something she did not have). It worked, she eats the crust and talks about how her hair is curling more every day (It's not). Go figure.
I love how they bring up Popeye eating spinach for iron and go on to say they miscalculated the amount of iron in spinach in an old study, but they don't mention that iron really doesn't make any sense in the context of strength (iron is used by red blood cells to help transport oxygen, it doesn't build muscle). Also, a healthy male who isn't bleeding all over the place shouldn't need to boost their iron level willy nilly because the body has no good way of getting rid of iron and iron overdoses are common. In fact men who have some baseline level of nutrition probably shouldn't worry about iron at all! I get it's a cartoon but when bringing it up in the context of nutrition myths and dragging it into the real world, why would you neglect this?
Beats me.
There are actually studies that suggest that men who donate blood regularly (thus getting rid of excess iron) have lower rates of heart disease.
Watermelon seeds would grow in your stomach.
Boiled Okra is good. (blech)still looks like runny baby snot.
Rutabagas are good for you. Still never figured out what a rutabaga was.
Water from the bathroom faucet tastes different than the kithchen faucet.
My dad told me I would go blind if I didn't stop.
what about the old story that cherries and milk are poisonous when mixed?
Chris, there was a President who only lived for approximately a month after he ate cherries and drank cold buttermilk at the same time. I can't remember his name, though.
Old Mert down at the bait store was complainin' about not bein' able to 'cut the mustard,' if ya know what I mean (this was before little blue pills), and the waitress at the truck stop told him eatin' bread was the best thing for it. He thought she was jokin,' but she winked and told him it was a sure thing. He immediately went down to the IGA and bought three loaves of bread. The checkout girl told him "It'll be hard before you finish it all," and he yelled "Dangit, does EVERYBODY know about this but me?"
lmao!
Bananas
My aunt ofered me a piece of banana cake, but she called it "bug leg cake." I like bananas, but I can't eat them mushed up in anything.
Nice to know you all had food as a kid. We starved. I remember stealing a bag of rice from a Publix once and knocking on neighbors doors asking for bread, We would ride our bikes around the neighborhood to look for soda bottles to exchange for a nickel to buy food.
Damn, that's rough. Parents underemployed?
You just made me LOL.
Your parents could afford bikes, but not food??
Right!
Poor you..... What's your point?
geez, my mom always gave me the active vitamin, ingredient, mineral, and chemical compound and structure... i learned more about the molecules in my food than i ever wanted to know... sucks having a biochemist for a mom sometimes... she also would go on and explain in great detail what would happen if you over eat something, then pull out the medical books and point out some of the obese people... that worked on a 4 year... I always ate my veggies (but then again, I've always liked vegetables, beets are AWESOME!)
Shortly after returning to the States after living in Japan for three years, I was cutting up a cantaloupe and my 3 daughters wanted to know what it was. The oldest was 5 and they had never seen a cantaloupe because all melons were too expensive in Japan and I hadn't bought one in 3 years. I told them it was alien brain. I guess I didn't want to share since I was pregnant and was really craving it. To this day, my kids, who are now teenagers, call cantaloupe alien brain and they all love it as much as I do.
We need to be careful what we tell our kids. It stays for life. As an example, What is the moon made out of?
Basalt and feldspar?
To avoid my children to drink soda, I always tell them Cok/7up are Mommy's milk, teast bitter.
My grandma used to tell me that if we wanted big boobs like her, we had to eat a lot of mashed potatoes. To this day I still love them. LOL
Just wondering if it worked?
I guess it did. Though I blame that on her genes now.
Hmm.:
Mom said eating the crusts of bread would make your hair curl.
Mine too!
Mom always said crust was where all the vitamins were.
I used to tell my son that squash was just mashed carrots (he liked carrots!), but he finally learned the trick, and it no longer worked to get him to eat squash. Either that or his brother told him the secret.
My wife and I told our sons that the ice cream truck was the music truck. It worked for years. As they got older we got humorous questions like, "Why does the music truck have pictures of ice cream on it?" The beautiful lie was finally laid to rest when they saw the neighbor kids buying ice cream from the music truck. The boys are now 6 and 8 and we all still laugh about the Music Truck when we hear the siren song echoing through the neighborhood.
My mother would tell me that if I ate candy before noon I would get worms.
I remember the spinach myth and most of the others listed.
Funny thing not mentioned in the article, spinach IS moderately high in iron, just not absorbable iron. About a good a source of dietary iron as a girder. But it IS good fiber and has nice trace minerals.
I still love it. Used to tell the kids they'd be strong as popeye. During the summer, I'd come in from work and after they ate their spinach, they'd use the extra strength to "toss' me into the pool.
Eventually, our kids learned my trick with the myths. Look them up for validity. THEN, I taught them the importance of balance and at least TRYING different foods (although the fried frog legs were "chicken", as was the rabbit at first).
Hence, when one day they came in from school and I had gotten in early from work, I was making duck soup from the head, neck and feet. The kids, after their initial reaction of having the soup look back at them when they went to sneak a peek, ate the 3 gallons of soup that night! No leftovers, to my mixed chagrin and pleasure.
And yes, I discarded the head and feet. Our cats LOVED me that night.
I actually did get patches of orange on my skin as a child. Good times...
My fiance was always told "If you eat the bread ends, you'll be lonely for the rest of your life!" and so she never did. I guess I can't really prove it wrong, though, can I?
My grandmother made czarnina, which is a Polish soup made from duck's blood, prunes, raisins and who knows what else? I refused to try it, and didn't fall for it when they told me it was "chocolate soup". Czarne is the Polish word for black, and the soup does have a very dark hue, hence the name czarnina. Incidentally "cz" in Polish is pronounced like "ch" in English.
That sounds gross. I can't say i don't blame you for not wanting to eat it.
My mother told my sister and me that eating leek would make our hair grow faster. I still think about it when i look at leeks!
My father used to say Brussels sprouts would grow hair on my chest, and so I ate them like a maniac. Why this was such a compelling incentive to an 8-year-old, I have no idea.
I remember my 2nd cousin's parents telling them that the only really good part of a lobster was the tiny legs on the side. I think they weren't too pleased with me when I reveled the truth.
At bed time when I was resisting sleep, my mom used to tell me to close my eyes so that sleep can't get in there!!!!!
hands down the best fib from a parent!
that. is. amazing. I am ABSOLUTELY using that the next time my daughter can't sleep!
I got the watermelon seeds will grow a melon in your belly line a few times, too. I also heard that bread crusts will make your hair curly and that cow tongue was a special steak.
My grandmother always told me that eating raw bread dough would make my stomach explode. That did NOT keep me from stealing a rising dinner roll every time she made a batch.
My father told me if I ate tomatoes they would turn my hair green. 36 years later- still haven't eaten them!
Asparagus makes you run faster.
My Dad used to tell me that the pimento in the middle of an olive was a cat tongue!
Okay, Jeff, this is the officially the worst thing I've read on this page, but I'm laughing my butt off!
Carol – the funny thing is that I'm not sure what he was hoping to accomplish by telling me this. We both liked olives and it certainly didn't stop me from eating them (but I did wonder why the tongues were soft and not "sandpapery" like a real cat's tongue).
I told my kids I was allergic to peas when I just didn't like them. They both love peas. Mission accomplished.
My grandpa always told me that bread crust would make hair grow on my chest. I've never been a fan of bread crust, and I'm certain this didn't help matters, lol.
We used to here that it was Horseradish that grew hair on your chest. :-)
My Grandmother would make me drink the fish oil from canned fish. Told me it was brain food. ALso she would tell me that if you swolled the pit from cherries, you would grown a Cherry tree from you tummy.
I will rat this one out on myself. When we would go to places with milk from a bag, I told my kids (then about 3 and 4) that there was a cow on the roof and you were milking it, when you lifted the handle. Sometimes I even made a moo sound when I lifted up the handle.
My dad always told me that eating bread crust makes your hair curly, so we always cut it off our PB&J.
My grandmother – and subsequently my mother – told me the same thing to GET me to eat the crust. I have stick-straight hair and always wanted curly hair!
My Mom told me that eating raw cookie dough would give me worms.
I was told the same thing when eating raw spaghetti.
A friend of mine is in med school and read about a couple of cases of parasites being ingested via raw cookie dough, and the patient in one case was sick for over a decade. My mom told me a lot of these myths, but it turns out that the cookie dough one is true!
Coffee will stunt your growth...works well as long as the child does NOT want to be a jockey...
It's funny, I tried to drink lots of coke when I was younger because I wanted to be a jockey!
This is the exact one I tell my 4 year old who is obsessed with being "big". I tell him I have finished growing so I can drink coffee. He can't drink coffee because he still has so much more growing to do.
I was told the same thing, and drank the coffee any way ... am a nearly 6 foot tall woman!
MilkDuds because they'll 'rip your fillings out'... I'm sure it's possible & it kept me from eating milk duds for a long time... BUT I caved, love em'!
Your MilkDuds comment brought up a memory – In 5th grade, a fellow student filled his mouth with MilkDuds. He pulled the mass of candy out of his mouth and then picked out 5 teeth. Shocking when you're 10.
lol gross!
Tay, I actually had a filling removed by a Sugar Daddy. I guess the Milk Dud warning isn't that far-fetched.
Someone shared their milkduds at a movie once with me. It actually pulled out a crown, which i swallowed before i realized what it was. The thought of a porcelain crown making its way through my digestive system freaked me out all week! So yeah, beware of milkduds if you have fillings.
A big hunk cracked one of my teeth. Thank goodness for microwaves...big hunks and abbazabas don't have to be hard anymore.
My grandmother always said that eating collard green (dollars) and black eyed peas (change) on new years would bring you wealth. The more you ate, the more you would make...I ate 5 times as much as everybody else, and look how broke I am...
Yeah, that's well known in the south. I grew up in Texas, and we ate collard greens and black eyed peas every New Year's day. Don't forget the chow chow!
it didn't come from my parents, yet it was a well known fact in kindergarten that if you ate the burned part of the bread, you would never be scared of the dogs! :)
My mother told me that the burnt toast was better for me because it contained carbon that helped digestion. Also, was instructed that the crusts would give me curly hair.
This debunking of the carrot myth has been floating around for a while. Someone seriously needs to pick up a science book here. The rods in your eyes benefit greatly from carrots. The recharge rate is increased allowing you to recover from flash dazzling much quicker than if you had lower betacarotine levels. Alton Brown actually does a good job at explaining how this works on one of his shows.
Easy enuf experiment... Add 2 carrots to your daily diet for 2 weeks. You will see the difference.
I am not sure I would use a chef as my primary authority. While it is true that adding carrots may help people with vitamin A deficiency (almost unheard of in developed countries) there is no evidence that it improves functioning in otherwise healthyindividuals
I may not be a fan of alton brown, but his show has good researchers and they give good facts and present alot of the science.
I think the myth that needed debunking was that carrots would give you extraodinary eyesight. There is no argument that carrots will improve some aspects of eyesight as you and Alton point out. It just won't give cat like night vision which was what the British were trying to make the germans believe back in WW2.
One trick to seeing at night is not to focus on what you are trying to see because the fovia in your eye is saturated with color receptors and they don't see well in low light conditions so the trick is to look off to the side of what you want to see so the focus of the image falls on the black-n-white receptors just outside of the fovia. Naval aircrew observer traing taught us this, does that make me "Trained Observer"?
Funny how a mental image can change the taste of food. In high school during varsity club initiation, we new sports letter winners were shown platefuls of earth worms, then blindfolded and told to eat. Unseen by us, the worms were replaced with cooked spaghetti noodles but that didn't save us from agony as we chewed away, trying not to swallow the worms!
My uncle used to tell me that if I ate my peas (which I hated) that I would grow up to be Miss America. Boy, was he wrong!
I can attest to the fact that eating too many carrots can turn you orange. When my son was about 9 month old, he decided that he would only eat orange baby food – carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, etc. I could sneak in a little bit of green here or there, but it was mostly orange. I had a friend call me up because she was concerned that he had jaundice! We had just been to the pediatrician for his 9 month well-check so I knew he was fine. He just liked carrots! The doc wasn't concerned, so I wasn't either. I have a great picture of him around this time next to his sister. He looks Photoshopped!
yeah, when my four year old was a baby she loved the baby food carrots for a while. when you look at certain pictures you can see that her little nose was orange.
Exactly the same thing happened to me with my first child! The pediatrician just laughed and said that when he started liking other vegetables besides the orange ones, it would subside. It was mostly concentrated in his nose, palms and feet.
Yeah, our pediatrician told us our son had a veggie tan...
"If you swallow your gum you'll fart bubbles"
Which actually backfired because that sounds pretty cool to a six year old
hilarious..i'm gonna use that one around a lot..thanx
That's funny!!!
Hahahahahaha!!!!!!
I had a hankering for liver and onions so I asked my 4 yr old what he wanted for supper and he said hippopotamous, so that's what we got. Baby beef hippo that is. You should have seen the look on that ladies face when he asked me 'Dad can we have hippopotamous again?' and I grabbed liver!
My aunt hated liver as a kid, but the rest of the family liked it, so my grandma started calling it "bushka," and my aunt, thinking it was a new dish, ate it for years until my mom got mad and told her what it was. She never ate it again.
My dad used to make us omelets, but called them circus eggs so we would eat them.
"- Hot, spicy foods on a sweltering day will cool you down: Fiery foods raise your body temperature slightly, bringing heat to the skin's surface and causing you to sweat. This perspiration will ultimately cause your body to cool down by evaporative cooling (temperature reduction through the evaporation of water)." +++++ This makes little sense: the only reason it brings "heat to the skin's surface" is that your body is hotter. Tthe extra cooling down is only because you have extra heat to begin with. If you are already sweating from the heat, hot, spicy foods are simply going to raise your body temperature.
See, I had always heard this one as "drinking hot tea on a summer day will cool you down." I think the idea is that one is hot, but not sweating yet. But since hot and cold are relative concepts, one might actually feel cooler without actually beng cooler from a temperature sense.
I'd prefer a shady tree.
so it's just coincidental that foods in the tropic and sub-tropic regions around the world happen to be the spiciest foods in general? thailand and india are both very well known for their boring, flavorless, non-fiery foods afterall
No, it's not a coincidence. Spices help preserve food from spoiling, so of course they use more spices in hotter environments.
You know that peppers grow best in hot environments right?
I agree with B. Climate must have something to do with it. One of my best friends is Indian and her parents are big tea drinkers, especially in the summer because, like the article states, I guess drinking a hot beverage or eating spicy foods makes you sweat and cool yourself down. Pretty interesting to think about...how people have adapted to suit their body's needs in different areas of the world. :)
True, tea is made with *boiled* water. In india and asia, much better to boil the water you'll be drinking – trust me.
Actually, even though eating spicy foods does raise your temperature a bit, they also cause increased bloodflow in your skin, transfering the heat from your core, where it not only can be radiated off, but increases your sweat production, thus bringin additional cooling power to the table.
i guess if you havent been sweating yet eating/drinking things to make you sweat would cool you down through the evaporation of the sweat (how we cool down as humans)-unless its super humid, then nothing but fans seem to help! but true also about the tea. in the deserts in africa and the middle east people often drink hot teas when they're outside in the hot day time. i'm not sure HOW much this exactly helps, but people must do it for a reason. :)
Actually if you raise the temperature nature atempts to remove the heat to create equilibrium. Your body sweats to speed this up. Alcohol is better because it causes vasodialation, and the veins close to the surface wick the heat away like a heat sink. I have a problem with the so called myth of carrots turning you orange, because the author goes on to actually prove them true. And the popeye one spinach was added to the cartoon during war time as a way to promote spinach for replacing meat as a source of iron, because of meat rationing. It wasn't about flawed studies it was about necessity. You know that mother of invention.
My mom told me that if you eat watermelon or bananas at night would make you ill
My grandfather used to tell me to eat my corn because it would put hair on my chest (not something to tell an 8 year old girl!)!
very funny
He just wanted the extra corn for himself. ;)
My Dad used to always say that! "It'll put hair on your chest!" My sister and I would always reply with very hearty ewwwe's! And my little brother, the little tank and bottomless pit of the family would sit back and giggle knowing it just meant more food for him!
"Eating your bread crust helps you learn how to whistle"
I agree with Carol. There is nothing more beautiful than a woman eating a banana!
This is humourous
Upon giving candy to a young girl for her birthday my dad said "Candy's dandy but liquor's quicker." He was right.
That is a famous poem by Ogden Nash!
My great-grandmother used to tell me to eat the crust on my bread because it would make my hair curly like Shirley Temple. My Dad would then always ask, 'who wants to look like Shirley Temple??'
To us, eating the crust would give you rosy cheeks!
ha! My great-grandma always told me the same thing! What's funny about that is that, while I was too young to realize it at the time, I already had rosy cheeks–still do.
my mom would say the same - bread crust makes curly hair. I was old enough to say "But mom, I dont want curly hair like you" hahaha. But now, I love eating crust!
I was told if I ate the crust on bread I would be strong like Batman.. oh the lies they tell us
My dad used to tell us if we ate the crust we would have curley hair too. My sister refused to eat her crust but I always ate mine.
thats hilarious, because when my mom told my sister and I to eat bread crust because it would make our hair curly, my sister would devour it and I would still cut mine off. A few years later, my hair became so curly it's not even funny! hers- straight as ever.
Eating the crust of the bread would help me whistle.
My father-in-law told my husband that! Also – his father told him! I love it! We tried it with our daughter, no dice- she just replied, " I can already whistle."
My mom used to tell me to eat the crust, because she said so. And if that didn't work I was reminded of the starving children in China. Funny, when she would suggest I dig a hole to China to keep myself busy during the summer months all I could think of was to take them some food.
I don't know how old are you lady,but acctually there's much less starving people in China now,although more and more youths can't afford their houses.
Well that was random....... and a bit disrespectful calling Susan "lady" and knocking her mention of China, as if that has anything to do with her views on China's current economic status. She's only sharing a childhood memory which happens to contain concern for children possibly going hungry in China, and a charitable and selfless thought of wanting to feed them. I'm sure there's a thread somewhere out there where you can discuss the current economics of China.
My mom said that it gave you curly hair too! Sometimes, I wonder if it did happen because now I have really curly hair! :)
Three cheers for your dad!
ANd I believed them because I always ate my crusts and I have curly hair!
My grandma always used to tell us the story of three brothers that were in jail. Two would eat the crusts of their bread and the third one wouldn't. The first two brothers who ate their crusts made the plan to break out of jail, and they asked the thrid to go along. They all tried to break out of their cells, but only the two that ate their crusts could bend the bars, but the third brother couldn't. He had to stay behind. The moral of the story? Eat your bread crusts so you can break out of jail. What a life lesson from your grandma! LOL :)
Hahahahahaha!!!!
My mum told me that the bread crust had more nutrition in it than the rest of the bread. I tried that one out on my partner's daughter at dinner recently (attributing it to my mum who was sitting at the table too) but she didn't buy it.
Also, brown eggs have more nutrition than white eggs – she actually believed that one.
Haha, I never had to be persuaded to eat my bread crusts so I had never anything like that before, but recently a friend (in her 20s) was complaining about bread being sold in the store with pre-removed crusts – they've removed all the nutrients, she said! I didn't have the heart to tell her that was probably just something her mother told her as a child to get her to eat them!!
what's so great about the crust that your parents wanted you to eat it so badly?
I don't really know. I guess 'cause they don't want to have to bother to cut 'em off. We parents can get pretty lazy at times.
I remember my grandpa telling us that if you swallowed a watermelon seed, a watermelon would grow in your belly.
my grandpa told me the same thing!!
My grandpa told me that too and I think about it to this day every time I eat watermelon!
Mine told me that too.
In other news, all you people are related. :P
i used to hear that from my grandparents and parents too..
and funny thing, i believed on it until i was in highschool... hahahah
My grandfater took it a step further and tooh a leaf from his watermellon patch and stuck it in his ear. He pulled it out exclaiming "see I told ya".
My dad told me the same thing haha. I was just old enough to realize that if that happened it would kill me, but didn't know that it couldn't happen. I cried for the next two days until my dad felt so bad for me that he told me he was just playing a joke on me.
I had the apple and orange seed version of that story.
My dad told me the same thing...then one time I accidentally swallowed one and started bawling because I knew what was to come! He then tried to tell me it wasn't true, but I don't think that reassured me much at the time!
like the infant stages of us. It remembers with the lie ..saying... It was answered that the friend was a lie. Because the watermelon was too heavy, and was said that it rotted.
How about brown cows give chocolate milk, and black cows give coffee.
Brown cows = chocolate milk was a big one when I was growing up. Thanks for the memory nudge. Never heard the dark brown cow answer but love the idea of a coffee cow. I'm going to use that one on my nieces!
Seems to me it would have to be café au lait.
hahahah..!cool one,Mike...
I was 5 years old and remember telling my mom that black moms were cool because they gave their babies chocolate milk and white babies could only got white milk. I was sad because if I wanted chocolate milk we had to buy it at the store.
I'm older and wiser now, but I'm still holding out that the moon is made of cheese.
I also thought that my Mom and Dad could only see in black and white in their childhood, since their TVs weren't in color yet.
Tapioca pudding is made from fish eyeballs! Veal is chicken! Pork chops are chicken! Hamburger is chicken! Then what is chicken made of? Hot dogs!
Shrimp, Lobster, and crabs are all giant bugs that live in the ocean! Thats the reasoning why we didnt eat seafood much cause of my moms allergy LOL. Biologically, this is really true. Multi-legged critters with exo-skeletons = bugs and crustacians!
Sean:
I have never in my life heard of another person thinking people saw in black and white before color TV was invented! I AM NOT ALONE! LOL! I once asked my mom if the whole world was black and white then one day magic happend and POOF the world turned color! I thought thats why the 60's people dressed crazy cause people freaked out about the sudden choice in so many colors of clothing!
Judy and Sean, I thought the same thing growing up! Kinda like the movie Pleasantville, huh Judy! LOL!!! Great theory BTW about why the sixties were so colorful. I love the way kids minds work! AHHHH....the magic of childhood logic............
I live in a small town in Iowa, so I always had a pretty good idea of what food came from where.
OMG....I heard that one a million times! And I'm guilty too! I told my little brother and nephew that at the zoo one day! LOL
I suppose mine was more of an untold truth, that sugary things, like soda, candy, etc.., is poison, and will eventually lead to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. I suppose a lot of parents keep this from their children.
That's fantastic, Rich.
Funny how the truth can work the best!
I say that a little is OK but a lot will make you very sick. Even though it tastes good, it will make you very ill if you eat too much. only eat a little bit. I figure total denial will swing things the other way and we hardly every eat processed or sugary foods.
There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with sugary foods or any junk food, for that matter. They're only bad if they make one gain weight- and, of course, if you're already diabetic you should avoid sugar- but it won't cause diabetes. I think we do kids a disservice by getting all wound up about junk food- it's desirable because kids aren't supposed to have it, it's a "treat" or for "special occasions." In my house we have junk food around all the time, and we're all thin. But we don't get all whacked out about what's "good" and what's "bad." The kids have all figured out how to handle the snacks and mostly choose to eat real food, because quite honestly, it tastes better.
Another lie reiterated here in a previous post......diabetics DO NOT "need to avoid sugar." Everything you eat is converted to sugar and some other necessary compounds. Diabetics control high sugar intake to control blood glucose levels, just as non-diabetics should.
Hey Diabetic Dr, diabetics need to control carbohydrates in general, and simple ones like 'sugar' can cause BS spikes.
And since compared to the average population, the number of allowed carbs per meal/day are small, they should be eating complex carbohydrates and not empty carbs.
Yes, all of your food eventually turns into glucose, but keeping your BS at a steady rate versus dramatic roller coaster ups and down, is important.
But you knew that, right? ;)
If you are really a diabetic dr, which I doubt, you are undoubtedly of that older generation of doctors that actually told us diabetics should eat MORE carbohydrates. That has not been current thinking for quite some time, even among new medical graduates.
I bet you're fat, otherwise you wouldn't expose your ignorant Texan stupidity by saying that junk food is OK for you and that we do kids a disservice by not letting them by as fat as you.
Um.. sugary foods and fatty foods ARE bad or you even if they don't make you fat. They can still cause health problems and affect people in other ways. And by the sound of your comment, it sounded like you eat a lot of junk food. You at least should know what the effects of junk food is.
"We have junk food around all the time" I really feel bad for your kids because they are going to have to grow up obese and fat and diabetic and all that just because their fat mom was just too stupid and ignorant to tell them the truth.
Danielle–I understand what you're saying....it's about education, moderation, balance and not creating any "Forbidden Fruits" so to speak. When kids are exposed to a wide variety of foods, are taught to eat everything in moderation, to balance their diets, and are taught what the health results are to one's body after consuming a specific food, good and bad, they tend to make wise choices in their food consumption.
Both of my kids have grown to be very conscious of what they consume (they're 17 and 22) and generally chose to eat organic, sustainable and very healthfully (lot's of fruits and veggies, whole grains, lean proteins, etc.), but they also indulge in sweets, salty, and fried food once in a while, but it's very seldom, and always in moderation. And they've both learned to make these 'treats' or 'indulgences' in order to avoid processed foods, HFCS, chemicals and dyes.
I'm sorry others made assumptions about whether or not you teach your kids about food and how to eat based on your post. Just wanted to let you know that I believe I understood what you were trying to say, and I used the same type of philosophy in teaching my kids, and they both turned out to be very healthy, both physically and in their attitudes toward food. Must people get so nasty, use ridicule, and start name-calling if they don't agree or misunderstand what someone says? Honestly.......
It's not really fair to say that sugar = poison. If so we'd all be dead. There is evidence that lots of sugar increases the risk of diabetes and other health problems, but it depends on how much you eat, genetic predisposition, and probably a number of other factors we don't understand yet. Lots of people grew up eating quite a bit of sugar (me for one) and made it through without contracting any major disorders (so far anyway). It's easy to get carried away with your kids and try to shelter them from anything that may cause them harm, even if it's stuff we all did without any negative effect.
In the amounts we eat it, it IS a poison. In the last 20 years, we have increased sugar consumption in the U.S. 26 pounds to 135 lbs. of sugar per person per year! Prior to the turn of this century (1887-1890), the average consumption was 5 lbs. per person per year! Our brains and bodies worked just fine on that 5lbs. And on the extra amount, obesity is an epidemic.
you sound like a really neat-o dad, I bet your kids are just as neat-o. kinda like you...