We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us a food fact they wrongly believed as a kid. Here are the results…
1.
"I cannot remember who told me this fact in the first place, but I spent far too many years believing dumplings were made out ducklings and therefore refusing to eat them."
– jenjenr
3.
"When I was a kid I didn't realize that chicken (the food) came from chicken (the animal). I thought they were two different things with the same name."
4.
"I live in Wisconsin, so there are cows a plenty. My mom told me that black & white cows give white milk and that brown cows give chocolate milk."
– Beks Lazar, Facebook
5.
"My brother-in-law thought the strings on bananas were poisonous until about two months ago (he’s 32). He got very concerned when he saw my sister eating a banana without carefully pulling all of the stringy pieces off."
6.
"I thought that dessert and supper each had a different stomach. That way, when I was ill from supper, I still had room for dessert in my dessert stomach."
7.
"I used to think 'fat free' was a type of sale and you didn't pay for the fat that was in the product."
– bekim2
8.
"When I was little I truly believed that carrots grew in the snow and that's why you used them for snowman noses. I have a memory of being around 4 years old, and digging in snow, looking for carrots and finding one. It took me years to realize it had been planted there for me to find."
9.
"I thought that food filled your whole body up from the toes to the head. So when someone said they were full, I thought it literally meant their entire body was full of food."
10.
"I got hiccups as a kid from eating ice cream too fast, and my godmother told me it was because I ate the ice cream so fast that I didn’t notice the frog in it and now it was trying to get out of my stomach. I cried."
11.
"My grandmother told me that if your ramen wasn't cooked, it would turn into worms in your stomach. I don't know why 5-year-old me believed her, but I wouldn't even eat cooked ramen for a year."
– asrianam
12.
"I read Alice in Wonderland as a child, and there’s a part in it where two characters talk about mustard being a mineral that you can mine for. In my tiny child brain, I didn’t realize that it was more silly Alice in Wonderland nonsense and went on believing in mustard mines until I was TWENTY FIVE."
13.
"My mom always told me that carrots made you sleep. I would only eat carrots at night to go to sleep and would avoid them during the day, until I was told otherwise when I was 21."
14.
"I grew up in a really rural area and I didn't see an ice cream truck until I was 12. I thought ice cream trucks were made up and some TV trope that didn't exist in real life."
16.
"My parents told me there's a family of mice in my stomach and if I don't eat they'll starve."
17.
"I used to think that our ankles are the shape that they are because when you eat potatoes that’s where they go. I’m unsure if I was told this by my parents or if I just made it up myself and they never denied it. Either way, I believed this for way too long."
18.
"When I was little, I thought the batter around fish from the fish and chip shop was the fish, and the white ‘meat’ inside was chicken. It wasn’t until I was eating battered fish and said to my mum 'Mmm, the chicken in this fish is lovely' and was greeted with her extremely confused/concerned look that I learnt the truth."
19.
"My sister told me that if I drank directly out of a 2 litre bottle that I would get a terrible disease called 'backwash'."
20.
"Someone told me that pecans were bat eggs, and if you opened them you could see the baby bat inside. Our neighborhood had lots of pecan trees and bats, so this made sense to me."
21.
"I had a rabbit as a kid and my dad convinced me that raisins were rabbit poo. To this day I still cannot eat them."
22.
"I didn't like potatoes. One Christmas, my parents served fried potato slices and I refused to eat them. My aunt then informed me that 'Those aren't potatoes, they're spuds.' 'They look a lot like potatoes, but they taste, different, so you should try them.' I did, and I loved them. Henceforth, I frequently asked for 'spuds', and my parents showed me all the different ways they could be cooked. I didn't realise the truth for several years."
23.
"I thought that if I cooked cotton wool I would get candyfloss/cotton candy. It did not taste good."
24.
"I used to hate pizza when I was a little kid (I know, weird) but I loved bubble gum. So my mom used to tell me the air bubbles on pizza actually contained a gum ball to get me to eat it, and it would only appear after I ate most of the pizza. Needless to say I was sorely disappointed, but now I love pizza so I guess it worked."
25.
"I believed that constantly eating a lot of food is how a woman got pregnant."
26.
"Until maybe first or second grade, I thought grilled cheese sandwiches were girl cheese sandwiches. As in not for boys."
– kylamf
27.
"Blackcurrant flavoured sweets have always been my mom's favourite, so when me and my sister were little, she tricked us into thinking that all black/purple sweets were liquorice flavoured (yuck). We'd happily hand over all of our blackcurrant wine gums, fruit pastilles, and jelly babies to her to 'get rid of', as though she was doing us a favour. We only discovered the truth years later!"
– Stephanie Shaw, Facebook
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.