My sister told me that green smarties (chocolate candies) would turn me into a nerd. I finally realized she just wanted candy.

Maya

When I was 4, my favorite food was fried scallops. One day, my mother brought fried scallop dinners home for supper. My 5 year old cousin was staying over, and we were splitting a dinner. About 1/2 way through, he whispered to me that scallops were fish cheeks. I believed him, and was so grossed out I stopped eating them for years.

I don't remember how I came to find out that they weren't fish cheeks, but when I did I asked my cousin about it. He said he just wanted the rest of them from the dinner!

Michelle

My mother and I used to pass a bakery that had meringue treats made to look exactly like mice in the window. The first couple of times she bought me one, but then decided we should both go on a diet. Until we moved away years later, every time we passed the shop and I asked for one she would tell me that they had maggots in them. I believed this until I was in my twenties.

hunger artist

I had a friend whose parents worked for the school district. His father was a bus driver and his mother was a cafeteria worker. His dad sat at the entrance to the cafeteria as we walked in almost daily. On the days that we had some sort of gray toned meat, he would tell us that he ran over an armadillo that morning and that it was being served for lunch. For some strange reason, we ate it..

Mad Marvin

Food:

My family used to (and still do, if truth be told) call Garibaldi biscuits 'Dead Fly Biscuits' Like a little fool, I thought they really did contain dead flies - tasty though!

James Thorpe

when i was in grade school i used to belive the lunch ladys made the ham and meat out of naugty chilldren. and the maionas was umm, how should i put this, they thought it was spurm.

nunnya

When I was little just to scare me my dad told me that eggs were liquid chickens. I was terrified to eat them because I was eating a baby chicken to make it worse my grandpa told me chickens would hatch in my stomache. I still can't eat them.

Danielle

I used to believe that a hot dog was a pig's tail uncurled.

amy - nh

My father told me that the special sauce on a McDonald's Big Mac came from Ronald McDonald blowing his nose (and that it why his nose was so red). I am now 29 and I still will not eat them.

Ami

When we were kids, my mother, in order to make us 3 kids behave, told us that if we were bad in public we would be sent to the "cookie house". My belief was that there was this strange little house that bad kids went to live if they misbehaved. This was a horrible little place where kids were given nothing but rock hard black cookies to eat. I even went as far as to believe that the "cookie house" was a small shed that stood in a park in my hometown (the shed was made into a "Santa House" at Christmas - so I thought that all the bad kids were moved only at Christmas time). Strange how this story scared us enough to make us all behave while out with mom!

Elizabeth

when I was about 5 my mother told me that sherbet was made out of dead people??!! I was most disturbed by this and after many many years, have only managed to muster the courage to try sherbet again in my late twenties.

Anna

When I was about 5 or 6 my brothers showed me this jar of nuts. I'm assuming now that I'm an adult they had sucked the candy coating from some penut M&M's to give the complete effect. Anyway..... they told me that this jar was filled with ... POOP NUTS......they then proceeded to OPEN THE JAR AND EAT THEM........... welp - needless to say - I don't like nuts to this very day.

Ducie

One day my family went out to lunch. My sister was about was about 3 years old. She loved chicken strips which were often called "Chicken Fingers". When my mother ordered chicken fingers for my sister, she became hysterical and began to scream. My mortified parents finally calmed her down and realized that she thought she was going to have to eat actual chicken fingers. Of course, she was too young to realize that chickens don't really have fingers.....

Charla

my grandfather told me that soy sauce was bug juice.

Anon

When I learned to read, I was deeply disturbed by the fact that some bottles said "ketchup" and some said "catsup." I would not allow my mother to buy "catsup" and in restaurants would inquire sincerely, "Do you have the ketchup without cats in it?"

Leah