general

When I was little I believed that if I didn't eat all of my scrambled eggs that the "Big Chicken" would come to claim his wasted progeny *shudders*

Brooke

I used to believe that you put butter on things to cool them down. It never occurred to me that it was for flavor until I was almost a teenager.

BT

I used to try to catch the man in the fridge turning on the light when i opened the door.Sometimes i was so fast there were footprints in the butter. Thanks dad i still do a quick scan...

Jo

I used to cry when eating spaghetti. I would imagine that it had once been alive, and would cry over it and apologize profusely after every forkful. I guess it looked bloody to me!

Anon

This is something that I remember from many years ago. My mom probably remembers it too, but, luckily, she doesn't mention it often. This might be a little long.
When I was three or four years old, my mom told me that we were going to go to a farm. The only farm (well, farm-type thing) I had ever been to was a place where they sold fresh produce, had a playground for kids, and, my favorite part, they sold ice cream. Naturally, I was very excited and I thought there would be ice cream at the farm. When we got there, it was sort of like a petting zoo, and we each got some animal food to give to the farm animals. I don't remember much about the animal food, but it looked a little bit like birdseed. Using kid logic, I concluded that the animal food was weird-looking ice cream, and tried to shove a handful of it into my mouth.
My parents had a good laugh about that one.

Animal ice cream

I thought that the peaches and pears in fruit cocktail were carrots and potatoes so I would only eat the grapes and cherries.

Michele Ellison

When I was little we would sometimes eat at Friendly's, a small restaurant like Applebee's except that Friendly's had all these great ice creams and desserts. I would always order the "Clown Sundae" for dessert... an upside-down ice cream cone in a bowl with the vanilla scoop as the head, the pointy cone like a hat, whipped cream around the back (like white clown hair) and M&Ms & chocolate syrup for a face.

I used to get really sad and cry because I didn't want to kill the clown by eating it. I would talk to it sadly as it slowly melted into a puddle, and once I was sure it was dead and wouldn't feel anything I would eat the candy bits, whipped cream and soggy cone out of the melted mess. It made me sooo sad. :(

I'm not 30 and to this day, the Clown Sundae (and pancakes with faces on them) makes me sad.

Joe

When I was a child, I was confused by the President's Choice brand. I didn't know how they found out all of the president's favorite things and if they switched them every four years.

Josh

I always knew that hamburger was made out of cows, but I was very upset when I found out that the cow actually had to die. Before finding that out, I thought that huge chunks of flesh were scooped off of living cows, and that they survived this procedure. I must have thought the world was full of cows with big chunks scooped out of them... either that or that the missing chunks grow back.

I recently shared this childhood belief with a friend of mine. She thought it was morbid, and I said, "What, more morbid than death?"

Anon

I used to believe that Buffalo wings were actually the legs of a buffalo, and they were just called wings to make them sound cool. The "drumsticks" did look a lot like chicken legs. When I realized they were actually chicken wings and Buffalo was a city, I still thought that drumsticks referred to the legs instead.

Buffalo

I believed Popeye when he said spinach made him strong. Yuk Yuk Yuk

johnboy

I didn't mind eating lambs brains when I was a kid because I thought it would make me smart.

Anon

when i was little my mother used to tell my that egg noodles were called frog noodles because kermit the frog ate them, because i was in love with kermit the form

Anon

I thought the 70's spoof "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" was actually scary. I was terrified of tomatoes for years, and even more terrified of one coming out of the kitchen sink drain because of the initial scene in the movie.

danheretic

Because I often saw my mother removing them, but never paid attention when she put them in....
I believed that french fries or "chips" for you brits came from the broiler part of the oven and if you waited a week or so there would be some in there to eat.
I recall once my mother said we had nothing to eat and I suggested that she check to see if there were any french fries in the broiler.

Mark

I believed that the mushy brown bits in bananas were good for you as my mum obviously thought this would encourage me to eat the whole thing without fuss. It wasn't until I heard myself repeating this as fact as an adult that I realised they were just bruises and I'd been duped.

tasha

I could read very early on, and a lot of the healhty cereals my mother would buy would talk about heart disease and why their cereal was healthy for you. I'd somehow gotten the idea that sugar went straight into your veins and made blockages, which then caused heart attacks. I took a look at my skinny little arms, and then at the spoonfuls of sugar I dumped on my Wheat Chex every morning, and stopped eating sugar on my cereal because I was sure that I was going to have a heart attack before I turned five.

PixelFish

When I was a child, I often heard the adage, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." I found this very disturbing and confusing. My father was a doctor and he loved apples. He ate them all the time. I thought maybe he ate the apples so he could stay away at work all the time. I wasn't sure. Maybe if other people ate apples, my father would die. I never developed a taste for that fruit. It gives me the creeps.

pestela

As a boy, during school dinners, I really used to enjoy the turnip that was regularly served with our meals.
All the other kids hated the stuff, but I couldn't get enough of it, and regularly used to finish off their unwanted portions.
For some reason I ended up telling my mother about this, and - because she didn't like the thought of me eating off other kids' plates - she told me that turnip was well-known for stunting the growth, and that schools were encouraged to serve it by cunning parents, so that kids wouldn't outgrow their school uniforms too quickly.
This certainly put me off the vegetable very quickly, and for years afterwards I believed this to be gospel, and would casually inform other people about the dangers of this growth-stunting root vegetable.
It wasn't until I was about twenty - and my height had stayed stubbornly at five feet no inches - that I casually observed to my mother that perhaps I'd been warned too late about the turnip after all. It was then that she shamefully admitted her deceit, and I enjoyed my first serving of turnip in years!

Carl Hollingsworth

When my son was 7 or 8, he use to love turkey but hate chicken. No way could I make him eat it until one day I told him that the roasted chicken I had cooked was a "baby turkey". Boy, did love it. Never had any trouble with him eating chicken (baby turkey) after that.

mrs bee