I didn't want to taste M&Ms at a birthday party, but my parents made me, and I found out that I liked them. I liked the red and yellow ones, but there were green and black ones too. Green and black were "boy-colors", so they were disgusting, and probably poisonous for girls.

Anon

I used to have phobia about seafood (shrimp, crabs, etc.) because I thought that they would slither up my face and crawl into one of my orifices. There it would proceed to nest and slowly eat my brain and lay eggs...

Taylor

i used to be deathly terrifed of Rice Krispies cereal. I thought the "popping" noise it made was a warning for me not to it eat!!

Snapcracklepop

Eating cookies when they're still warm from the oven will make you violently ill. That's why you have to ask Mommy before you take one.

MaryK

I used to believe that the tiny bits of food left in the gravy when you've finished eating were calories. I knew that eating too many calories was a bad thing, so I always made sure I left some.

Nick

When I was a kid I used to love Burger King fish sandwichs (called the Whaler) with a vanilla milk shake. My mom (from Pakistan) told me I should never drink milk with fish or it would cause me to have huge white spots all over my body. Once we saw a lady with huge white spots and my mom told me she drank milk after eating fish. She said I could drink milk first then eat fish and I would be ok, but never the other way around. I would still drink my milk shake after the fish just waiting for the white spots to appear. They never did. But I figured if ever they did appear, i would just keep drinking milk and eating fish until my whole body turned white. Then I would look ok.

I finally realized this was a Pakistani myth. But my mom still believes it. So do some of my uncles.

Rafay from Connecticut

When i was young, my Granny, aunts, uncles and of course papa and mama used to tell us that if you didnt finish every bit of rice(we asians here have rice as staple) off your plate, whatever thats left over on it will appear of your future husband/wife's face as pockmarks and pimple. And i figured what its noodles that left over? oh man, wouldnt that be scars that would appear then?! Up till now, i still kinda believe in it.

Skeletony

My Granddad told me his favorite jam was boysenberry. I thought he was saying poisonberry, and I was afraid to taste it.

bessy

If you don't eat Potato Croquettes in under 1 minute they explode.

Sarah

When I was little, before I developed my perception of size, I use to be convinced I would fall down the holes in crumpets so would never go near the things!!!!

Rachel Jones

When I was a kid, I was very afraid of chicken pot pies, and wondered why anyone would ever eat any such thing. It was probably because I wasn't yet clearly hearing a distinction between "chicken pot" and "chicken pox". So I must have been thinking of them as "chicken pox pies".

Jennifer

You know those hard round lumps you sometimes find in a chicken nugget? I had heard something when I was about 6 or 7 about breast cancer lumps and thought that since the chicken nugget box said "made with all breast meat" I thought those lumps were breast cancer and if I ate it I would get breast cancer too

Tiffany

My mother told me that Hershey chocolate bars were made at three mile island and that they were radioactive. This was just after the meltdown was in the news. A very effective method of curtailing my desire for the candy when we went to the store. Years later I asked her why she made up the story and she claimed that she never said it.

caleb

My older friend told me when I was a little girl that if I kept eating only the sugary marshmellow in the Lucky Charms that I would go to hell for being picky. Til this day I cannot eat the marshmellows alone.

deb

I used to like to eat pats of butter when I was small, and my mother told me if I ate too much, a wall of butter would form around my heart and I would die.

Maureen

My mom had me believing that if I ate chocolate I would break out in these horrible hives. She told everyone to make sure that I 'stay away from chocolate' because I was 'allergic.' When I finally had chocolate at someone's house, nothing happened. Now, as Mom is a huge chocoholic, I can only conclude that she didn't want competition for her stash...

queeneve

My grandma always told me that vinegar would dry my blood - I loved vinegar but also used it sparingly worried that I might just end up with powder in my veins.

KeithMc

My grandmother used to say "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die", and not having any idea of the weight or measurement of a peck I believed that when you reached that limit of a "peck", you just automatically dropped down dead. It was my job to scrub the vegetables before cooking and you better believe I scrubbed the heck out of them.

Judith Hampton

I once heard on Newsround that if you ate burgers and drank coke it would poison you. So when we went to MacDonalds I would always made sure that I ate a few chips in between eating my burger and drinking my coke. Always careful they didn't mix in my mouth as that would poison me.

Mark

Everytime I had a stomach I ache I thought I was dieing of rat poisoning. My dad had stored a candy baron top of our fridge. It had been there a week and so my little candy-staved brain assumed he forgot about it. I ate it. A week later my dad appeared to be in a panic and said that someone had eaten the candy bar he had posioned for the rats to eat. He was hoping to "out" the thief, but I was to afraid to tell him I ate it. I was convinced for years that I was going to die from eating that candy bar.

And I never stole candy again.

Becka