lies our parents told us.

posted on: Friday, November 19, 2010


I was thinking about how my mom used to tell me that the crust of the bread was where all the vitamins were and that I had to eat it if I wanted to grow big and strong. I believed this up until I was in college. Then one day I thought about it for more than 2 seconds and was all like "whaaaaat?!"

Your turn.

Did your parents ever lie to you to get you to eat or not eat something?

ps. Today is the last day to vote for the November cook off.
ps segundo. Minus ten points for you if you complained this week about how warm it was. Now it's cold and rainy with no sunshine in the foreseeable future. 

31 comments:

  1. My dad used to tell me that white bread was just dough....he would take a piece and press it in his hand to see how it just formed into a flat blob...years later I realized wheat bread (any bread) will do the same thing!
    Yes, bread is dough..baked.
    but it kept me from buying white bread.

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  2. Hmmmm...Never told food lies. My mom sccepted the early fact that I would for the next 18 years of my life live off of Ramen and grilled cheese.

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  3. My grandma used to tell me that if I ate standing up, the food would go straight to my legs and they would get HUGE.

    I totally believed her for the longest time. To this day, even when I'm in a hurry, I always try to sit down to eat. :)

    Other lies included: if you drank coke in the morning, you would get sick and throw up. If you ate and immediately went into the pool, you would get sick (or, possibly drown).

    Hmmm, funny how all their "lies" revolved around food, lol.

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  4. Natascha- Do you think the eating and drowning is a Brazilian myth. I've never heard that here but my parents used to tell me that ALL the time too. I had to wait 3 hours before getting in the pool or ocean. It was such a drag.

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  5. I really think it's sucha Brazilian thing to lie to your children about food hahah! I was always lied to about the craziest thing....my mom once told me that if i drank all my suco de maracuja my eyes would turn blue like xuxa (i was obsessed with xuxa, of course) hahaha! and when I was getting ready to come to the US my aunt would tell me that in the airport they had a weight scale and if i didn't eat all my food I would weight enough to get on the plane! lol!

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  6. Emmi-Notice how these lies are actually pretty terryfing. My goodness. You, Natascha, and I should get together to tell stories.

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  7. all my parents did was lie to me! they still do! luckily i know not to listen to their little lies anymore!

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  8. Actor's diet- Woah intense! Hopefully it was never anything too important.

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  9. My mom used to tell me that it was bad to eat cake batter because it had raw baking powder that would make my belly grow and blow up. The pool one was also always a classic!

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  10. I think I believed the crust thing until 2 seconds ago.
    My mom believes marshmallows make you taller. Really.

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  11. I think it's probably a myth, but I have learned not to completely discredit these so-called myths. For example, my mom would always make me drink coconut water (agua de coco) when I had any kind of stomach bug and was throwing up. I always thought it was a myth, but then I read a study about how coconut water is very rich in electrolytes and helps rehydrate you. You can see it in many vitamin stores and even groceries stores these days here in the US (we even have a bunch of different flavored ones here at Google). As you can imagine, when you're sick like that, your electrolytes become imbalanced and you can easily become dehydrated. So there is truth to that after all. :)

    Now, here's another biggie: does suco de maracuja (passion fruit juice) really calm you down, as they say? When I was stressed or anxious, I was told to drink that every time, lol.

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  12. Amanda- Cake batter. I remember that one too.
    Mariko- marshmallows? Really? So did she encourage you to eat marshmallows?
    Natascha- The suco de maracuja thing is true right? I think it's true. Nother questions, is it true that mangoes with milk are bad for you?

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  13. I guess mine doesn't qualify as lies about food nutrition. But my mom always told me that onions, cabbage, mustard..etc. were things that I didn't like and shouldn't eat...because she doesn't like them!! I grew up and realized "HEY I LOVE onions and mustard". This is why I make my girlies (mostly e) try it all! Better to form your own opinions of food :)

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  14. Daielle- I agree better to form your won opinions for sure.

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  15. hehe. i once panicked as a child, telling my dad that i had just swallowed an orange seed. he said, well i guess you'll have a little orange tree growing inside you... and seeing the worried look on my face, he teased, you'll just have to open your mouth every once in a while to let a little sunlight in for it.

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  16. Tammy-I love this! I can imagine the look on your face as I think of my own Enzo who believes everything I say!

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  17. this is not really a lie, but whenever we ate dinner (always together, around the table) we were told to eat everything on our plate. of course we never wanted to do this. and so our parents would tell us that there were starving children who would give anything to have our food, and so we had to eat it. i was always very confused at this explanation for why we should eat all of our vegetables -- if there were starving children who wanted the food, and i DID not want it, it seemed there must be some way to give them my food. a perfect solution. instead my parents frowned at our precociousness and told us to eat everything on our plates.

    also, we definitely got the no swimming after eating line. very forbidden. i still don't understand why.

    this is unrelated to food, but playing with plastic bags was also FORBIDDEN. i guess i understand the risk now, that children might play with them and accidentally suffocate themselves, but to this day i still think there is something inherently wrong with plastic bags that will lead you to physical harm. i tend to go for paper.

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  18. Yes! If I ate too much brown sugar, worms would grow in my tummy....among many others! But she did let me eat raw egg and raw hamburger....go figure?!

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  19. It was a family joke from my mom's generation that eating good and healthy food would curl your hair if you were a girl and put hair on your chest if you were a boy. My mother still thinks this is a funny thing to say- even out at a nice restaurant. I try not to feed into her humor, haha ;)

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  20. My parents always told me that if I drank Coke or Pepsi before noon or after 6pm, then I would get very sick for the next two days. What I realize now that I didn't know then, was that by drinking pop early and late, it would make me all wired on sugar....and that is the thing that really would make me sick...not the pop itself of the timing. Children don't know when to stop drinking too much...so the scary stories would have to do.

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  21. My parents told me if I swallowed a seed of any kind that the plant would grow and sprout out my ears. I was also told if I swallowed my gum it would take 7 years to digest, even though it's not true, I still can't bring myself to swallow gum.

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  22. ACTUALLY, I read that what your mom said is TRUE. It is in the book Superfoods: 14 Foods that Will Change Your Life. I am not going to look for the page number. But it is in the chapter all about whole wheat and whole grains.

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  23. I remember once when I was pretty little my dad told me that I had to eat my beans because they would put hair on my chest. Since I'm a girl, I said "daaadddd....I don't want hair on my chest!" So he proceeded to say "well, then it'll put something else there..." Ha. He's goofy. I was probably 8 years old and totally embarrassed by the statement. My parents were always really careful to be upfront with me. I never even believed in Santa because of the honesty factor. I plan to do the same with my daughter.

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  24. I don't remember much about food, but my mom did always tell me that if I didn't go to bed before midnight I'd turn into a pumpkin. I was so nervous the first time I tested that out.

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  25. ahhhh now I have so many to reply to. It's a good rpoblem to have because you guys are hilarious. I loved everyone's story. The gum one I've heard before too and I never swallow my gum. I seriously thought that was true. IS it really not?

    the local spoon- I never liked the "there are children starving in Africa" rhetoric. It's so incredibly problematic. I'm more for the whole "eat your food while I try and explain neoliberalism to you. Eat every bite because this will take a while!"

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  26. my mom used to crack raw egg yolk into our milkshakes because all the "good stuff" was in the yolk. you know, the "good stuff" that today we call cholesterol and salmonella.

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  27. My mom told me the same lie and just like June said my tell would tell me that spinach would put hair on my chest. That just grossed me out more.

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  28. Rebecca- my dad used to do the same thing when we had a cough. It was so nasty.

    Annie- the whole food and growing hair in different body parts is plain old creepy.

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  29. My mom would tell me that if I ate Raw cookie Dough I would get worms. She still swares by it today. ;)

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