dangerous food

I used to think that Fruit Gushers would actually turn your head into a fruit, so I was morbidly afraid to eat them.

Carter

I'd recently learned that opium was made from poppies. My mom and sister and I were invited over for lunch at a neighbor's house. She served sandwiches on poppy seed rolls. My eyes got really big, because I thought she was trying to turn us all into addicts, and was shocked that she'd do such a thing, and she wasn't even being sneaky about it. I carefully, unobtrusively scraped all the poppy seeds off my roll before eating it.

Anon

I used to belief that a serial killer popped out of a cereal box.

chelsea layman

When I was an 8 year old boy, my mom used to tell me that if I ate the fatty part of my steak that I would grow breasts (I loved eating the fat, so I assume she was trying to scare me away from it). I thought the undigested piece of fat would travel right to the breast and get deposited under the skin. I was scared off for a while...I'm 28 now and I still eat the fat. No breasts yet....

sauerkraut

When I was 6 or 7, My sister dared me to eat a cat biscuit, then she told my mother, who said "Oh, so you are just sitting there waiting to die then are you?" I went upstairs and kissed goodbye to all my cuddly toys and laid on the bed waiting to die. It never occurred to me that the cat ate them all the time with no side effects...

Jiggly

when i was in 1st grade, i accidentally checked out a book on the digestive system. I read it, and it told me exactly how you can die from choking. I instantly became paranoid and refused to eat anything that might cause me to "choke". So for almost 2 years, all I ate was canned peaches, cottage cheese, and plain spaghetti noodles. :D

embaressed

When I was younger my parents told me there was a type of cheese that cut your tongue when you ate it. It took me years before I realized they were talking about "sharp" cheddar!

Jessica

My mom told me that if I ate uncooked cookie dough I would get worms living in my stomach. This fear lasted for years, even after ice cream companies started making varieties with names like "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough". Later, as a young adult, I cautioned another adult who was licking the (cookie) bowl clean. My warning was greeted with a smirk followed by howls of laughter and accusations of believing everything my mother told me! Someone did tell me that uncooked flour can contain worms, but I think my mother was trying to protect the cookie dough more than she was trying to protect me!

Rufus

When I was 5, my father informed me that if I ate 10 Oreo cookies I would explode. I believed him for several years.

Jon

When I was little whenever someone would suggest going to "Steak and Shake" my dad would always say "Nah I think we should go to "Snake and Quake" and I would beg him not to mak us go in fear of having to eat a snake.

Anon

up until i was about 8, i refused to eat sugar puffs, or ever utter the phrase 'i want my honey!' because if i did i would turn into the Honey Monster. i gradually learned to turn off the tv when the sugar puffs adverts came on.

i was also terrified of worzel gummidge, and once stole a worzel gummidge book from my nursery class and put it in the bin in the girls' toilets.

and i thought dinosaurs lived in my bathroom.

unicorn

When I was in kindergarten I was introduced to those weird, uniformly shaped potato chips known as Pringles. "Don't eat those," my dad warned me. "They'll make your hair fall out."

"Really?" I said. My dad often told me things that weren't true. But this time there was irrefutable evidence.

He rubbed a hand over his shiny bald head. "Well, look at me."

Also, I harbored the belief (until fairly recently) that botulism was *caused* by dented cans, and that if I dented a can, the food preserved within would be seething with botulism in no time.

EvaZ

My sister's friend was told when she was 13 that if you have Pop Rocks candy in your mouth and take a sip of soda, you will explode. Being the bright child she was, she immediately tried it. It nearly worked. The soda made the candy flare up in her mouth, causing her to spew it all of the sink. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw.

Haley

When I was little my big brother told me that if I ate raw potatoes my teeth would grow curly.

Lauren

My mum told me that black fruit pastilles or really any black jelly sweet were deadly to children and that I should give her them if I found them in my packet. It was many years before I found out that in fact they are her favourite so she told me that to get them all.

Cat

I thought that anything that wasn't explicitly food was poisonous up until I was about nine, when my dad told me that only a few things are poisonous.

Anon

My older brother used to tell me if you ate raw potatoes your teeth would grow long and curly!

Lauren

When The start of Daylight Saving Time in the USA was changed for late April to early April, I thought I had a guess as to why, or at least as to what made it a good idea. I had heard my aunt and some others taalking of a saying that oysters are safe to eat in months whose names contain the letter "R", but not in months containing no "R". That apparently is a real saying. But my aunt went on to tell me that once she had eaten some oysters at what she thought was about 11:30 PM on April 30. Then she made a horrific discovery that she'd forgotten to reset her watch to Daylight Saving Time, so she actually ate those oysters around 12:30 AM on May 1. She said she got really sick from eating those oysters. So I thought that changing the time change to early April was good for that reason, for that way hardly anybody could have failed to reset their watches by May 1. (Later my aunt told me that her story about getting sick from eating oysters that time was a joke, and that she's never really gotten sick from eating oysters, although the saying might have some rough validity.)

Monica

When I was little, I overheard my grandfather persuade my cousin to eat spinach by promising him it would put hair on his chest. Being a five year old girl, I was horrified by this notion. I refused to touch the stuff until I was nearly thirty.

Jamie Noel

I used to think that apples that were both red & green were poisoned (thanks to a too-early exposure to Snow White & The Seven Dwarves). I still can't eat apples that are both red and green.

Anon