Fallacies about Food

Many primitive peoples believed that by eating an animal they could get some of good qualities of that animal for themselves. They thought, for example, that eating deer would make them fleet like the deer. Cannibals believed that eating enemies that had shown bravery in battle would make them brave. Cannibalism may have started because people were eager to become as strong and brave as their enemies.

Among civilized people it was once thought that ginger roots by some magical power could improve the memory. Eggs were thought to make the voice pretty. Tomatoes also were believed to have magical powers. They were called love apples and were supposed to make people who ate them fall in love.

Later another false idea about tomatoes grew up—the idea that they were poisonous. How surprised the people who thought tomatoes poisonous would be if they could know that millions of tins of tomatoes were supplied to soldiers overseas during World War II.

Even today there are a great many mistaken ideas about food. Some of them are very widespread. One such idea is that you should not drink water with meals. Washing food down with water as a substitute for chewing is not a good idea, but some water with meals has been found to be helpful. It makes the digestive juices flow more freely and helps to digest the food.

Many of the ideas which scientists tell us have no foundation have to do with mixtures of foods. A few years ago the belief became general that orange juice and milk should never be drunk at the same meal. The reason given was that the acid in the orange juice would make the milk curdle and become indigestible. As a matter of fact, milk always meets in the stomach a digestive juice which curdles it; the curdling of the milk is the just step in its digestion. A similar false idea is that fish and ice cream when eaten at the same meal form a poisonous combination.