A childhood belief about eating

When I was little, my mum told me not to swallow chewing gum. I asked why, and the reason she gave me was totally unsatisfactory, or at least kind of partial. Like: "Because your stomach can't digest it." To 6-year-old me, that was just not satisfying as an explanation. The same with toothpaste.

So in my head I imagined that everybody's stomach has lots of different compartments, each for a different type of food. There'd be one for peas, one for roast beef, one for spaghetti, etc. But things that aren't food don't have their own compartment. So when you swallowed chewing gum, the whole system would get messed up because the gum wouldn't know where to go.

This theory also had the nice benefit of explaining why you've always got room for pudding :o)