17 Food Myths People In The Olden Days Actually Believed

Why do we blow out the candles on a birthday cake? How come everyone was so afraid of tomatoes back in the day? What’s the deal with Victorians putting acid in milk? People have believed some pretty strange things about the foods we eat on the daily. In fact, many of the foods we know and love have had to jump through hurdles to clean up their reputations previously tarnished by old myths, legends, and utterly untrue beliefs. We’ve founds some of the whackiest food myths people believed decades and centuries ago that might explain a lot, or leave you with more questions than when you started reading.

We often take the food we eat every day for granted. We can easily go the grocery store and pick up a bag of potatoes, a handful of sage, apples, noodles — really anything we’re hungry for. But back in the olden days, when explorers were bringing back foreign fruits and vegetables from far off lands, people were seeing some of our favorite delicacies for the first tine. And they didn’t trust them.

Fear, misunderstanding, and skepticism led our ancestors to make up some pretty interesting stories about the foods they were seeing and trying for the first time. Some stories lingered, some shifted in plot, and others were thrown to the wayside.

Here are a few of the best food myths we’ve come across that will make you think differently about the foods you know and love.

1. Potatoes can kill with their ugliness.

Potatoes traveled to Spain in the late 16th century and were not given the warm welcome they deserve. Being members of the poisonous deadly nightshade family, people weren’t keen on incorporating potatoes into their daily diets. Furthermore, the ugly outward appearance of the potato caused many Europeans to believe they carried diseases like leprosy and syphilis.

Cultivating potatoes was actually banned in Burgundy, France in 1619.

Up into the 18th century, Germans were so turned off by potatoes, they wouldn’t even take them for free when Frederick the Great offered them during the famine of 1774. It took centuries for the potatoes to enter the Europe’s good graces, and now, Europeans can’t get enough of them.

2. Milk needs to be purified with acid.

Milk in the Victorian era was unpasteurized, meaning it wasn’t treated with mild heat to kill off pathogens and extend shelf life. And refrigeration at this time in history was at a minimum (fridges that did exist oftentimes leaked toxic gasses like ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulphur dioxide).

So, to keep milk fresh, Victorian housewives and kitchen staff would often add boracic acid to their milk to keep the sour smell at bay and “purify” it.

Although they thought they were doing their families a favor, small amounts of boracic acid, thought to be “harmless” at the time, actually caused nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach cramping. And worse, it masked and encouraged the growth of bacteria-caused bovine TB, a harmful disease that damaged the spine, internal organs, and caused death in about a half a million children during the Victorian era.

3. Apples are only eaten by sinners.

Because Eve ate the forbidden fruit — an apple — in the Garden of Eden, people were anti-apples for a very long time. But their apple phobias were pretty baseless. As History.com points out, the Bible actually never identifies which fruit Eve ate. It’s thought that the apple image was taken from a 4th-century Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, in which the Hebrew word “ra” was translated to “malum,” which means both ‘evil’ and ‘apple.’

This wonky translation led to Renaissance artists assigning the apple as the forbidden fruit image, and it has gotten a bad rap ever since.

Historians now think the forbidden fruit was actually a pomegranate, fig, or quince.

4. Noodles must never be cut while eating.

In both ancient and modern Chinese culture, it’s a big no-no to cut noodles while you’re eating them. One must slurp up the entire noodle without it breaking it, otherwise, just like that noodle, your life will be cut short. Well, don’t actually slurp it — that’s considered rude in many Asian societies.

So if getting an entire noodle in your mouth means stuffing your face full of other noodles, then so be it.

One wouldn’t want the noodle omen to come true, now would they?

5. Sage can make you immortal.

Almost every ancient culture has been using sage for medicinal purposes since seemingly the beginning of time. The Chinese use red sage to help aid with pain after childbirth and regulate menstruation. Greeks used it to flush toxins from the body. And early Europeans made sage tea to cure common colds, fevers, liver ailments, and even used it to treat epilepsy and memory loss.

But both the Romans and Arab physicians thought sage could make a person immortal.

Did one culture influence the other, or did both experience sage-induced immortality? Something to think about…

6. Alcohol is the root of all evil.

Throughout the 19th century, there was an uptick in religious revivalism during which people preached about the sins of liquor. By the early 20th century, the temperance movement called for bans on alcohol consumption and saloon culture, believing that alcohol was the root cause of destroyed families and marriages. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson instated a temporary prohibition to save grain for World War I. Later that year, Congress submitted the 18th Amendment, thus banning the production, transportation, and sale of liquor.

As we all know, Prohibition didn’t last long.

By the end of the 1920s, bootlegging, skyrocketing prison populations, and cost for law enforcement had people rolling their eyes. When the Great Depression hit in the early 30s, legalizing alcohol was appealing for most. By 1933, Congress proposed to repeal the 18th Amendment with the 21st.

7. Coconuts are actually severed heads.

Unsure of where coconuts originated from, the native people of the Pacific Islands dreamt up their own origin story for the hard-shelled tree fruit. Because the coconut has physical features that look like “two eyes and a mouth,” ancient Pacific Islanders believed that the coconut “first grew out of a human head.” Specifically, a decapitated human head from a dead body.

The stories of these ancient peoples are known to be quite violent — and the coconut origin story is no different.

The people of New Britain have a similar origin story in their culture. They believe that the coconut came from the head of a boy who was out fishing and was devoured by a shark. Only his head remained, and where it washed ashore, a coconut tree eventually grew. Most island native peoples have similar coconut origin stories, almost all of which have to do with a human head getting buried and turning into a coconut tree. You’ll probably never look at coconuts the same way again.

8. Salt is the Devil’s condiment.

You’ve probably heard of or experienced the superstitious act of tossing spilled salt behind your left shoulder using your right hand to ward off evil. The custom comes from Europe and was (and still is) practiced by those in the Christian faith. If spilled salt is not dealt with properly, the Devil could attack and steal your soul.

According to The Encyclopedia Of Superstitions by Edwin and Mona A. Radford per The Takeout, “The devil is believed to detest salt, as it is incorruptible, immoral, and linked to God.”

“If a superstitious person accidentally spills some salt, he must immediately throw a pinch over his left shoulder. This is because the devil is likely to attack from the rear, and will also attack for the left, or sinister side. The presence of salt will immediately scare off the devil before he has time to cause any difficulties.” Good to know.

9. Cannibalism is kind of okay.

For almost 300 years, Europeans subscribed to “corpse medicine,” which is exactly what it sounds like. From the early 16th century into the Victorian era, some people consumed parts of the human body in an effort to cure a variety of different illnesses. Powdered skull was used to treat head-related issues and was sometimes mixed into chocolate or alcohol for easy consumption.

And even the moss that grew on decomposing skulls was taken in powder form to cure nosebleeds.

Drinking fresh blood was preferred for those who needed a boost of strength, and ground up fragments of Egyptian mummies were found in a Victorian apothecary shop for, honestly, who knows what? Yeah. Europeans were okay with eating other (dead) people for a really long time, which is very disturbing to think about.

10. Bread filled with sawdust is totally fine.

In the Victorian era, machinery was brand new, manual labor was cheap, and the population was expanding. The new middle class, able to afford finer things in life, meant the demand for “fancier” breads was high. Therefore, Victorian bakers were doing whatever they had to in order to make a lot of product and to do so fast.

To make standard bread look whiter, chalk and alum, a chemical compound containing sulfate and aluminum, were often added to the dough.

And to bolster the yield of each batch, bakers would even add plaster of Paris, pipe clay, or sawdust to their bread dough.

11. Parsley is the Devil’s herb.

Most of us encounter parsley in our everyday and think nothing of it. However, back in the day, parsley was called the Devil’s Herb and was barely found in anyone’s garden. Supposedly, in ancient Greece, parsley was used to decorate graves and tombs.

This tradition was the source of an old proverb used to describe a dying person that went, “he has need of only parsley.”

This connection to death also spawned the myth that parsley seeds have to go to the Devil and back nine times before they sprout, which was said because parsley takes so long to germinate. And if the seeds never sprouted, that meant the Devil was living in the garden bed.

12. Tomatoes are downright deadly.

When Europeans began shipping foods back from the “newly discovered” Americas in the early 16th century, tomatoes — a favorite food among the native populations of South America — went along for the ride. Europeans were wary of tomatoes at first, aware that they, like potatoes, belong to the poisonous, deadly nightshade family.

However, knowing that the natives ate them, many decided to give tomatoes a go.

But because tomatoes are so acidic, they reacted differently to heat than the Europeans expected. And when eaten off pewter plates, as was the norm, the tomatoes’ acidity pulled lead from the pewter and gave some Europeans fatal lead poisoning. Tomatoes only stuck around in Europe because people found them pretty to look at. Luckily, post-pewter dinnerware, people gave tomatoes another chance.

13. Breadfruit came from a man’s testicles.

There are several different stories connected to the origins of the tropical breadfruit. But according to one Hawaiian myth, the breadfruit arrived to the islands after a native sacrificed himself for his family.

After he died, a breadfruit tree grew from his testicles.

All 44,000 Hawaiian gods, unaware of the fruit’s origin, tried the breadfruit and really enjoyed it. But when they found out where it came from, they vomited up the fruit and seeds, thus spreading them across the island. Now that’s a great prank on the gods.

14. Strawberries are holy — and don’t you forget it.

It’s said that strawberries were first linked with the Norse goddess Frigg (also seen as Frigga), wife of Odin, king of all the gods. However, when Christianity spread through Northern Europe, this tie was severed and strawberries became the fruits of the Virgin.

And no one else was allowed to eat strawberries. They were for the Virgin, and the Virgin alone.

This new religious rule outlined that anyone who tried to enter Heaven with strawberry juice on their lips would be denied entry. And to really ward people off from eating strawberries, a new myth was created that stated any baby who died and ascended to heaven would be disguised as a strawberry in order to keep evil away. Therefore, if you eat a strawberry… you may be eating a deceased baby… Yeah. It’s very weird.

15. Fennel keeps the witches away.

Fennel, the licorice-tasting herb similar to celery, can be used for all sorts of tasty things in the kitchen, from flavoring soup stocks to seasoning salads, and it’s a great mate to seafood.

Apparently, fennel is also useful to those who wish to keep witches away from their houses.

According to Gardener’s Path, fennel was hung on the doorframes of Medieval homes to keep witches and their dark magic at bay. Fennel, both the stalks and the seeds, which were placed in keyholes, also supposedly warded the Devil off.

16. Birthday cake candles ward off evil spirits.

When you really start to think about it, the tradition of blowing out candles on a birthday cake is pretty strange. What’s the significance? Ancient Greeks were the first to put flame atop cakes.

Instead of doing so to celebrate an individual’s birthday, they would bake moon-shaped honey cakes to celebrate Artemis, the moon goddess.

But too much celebration could bring around unsavory spirits. So, in an attempt to keep evil at bay, the Greeks put burning candles atop the moon cakes, believing the flames kept spirits away.

17. Peanuts and NASCAR do not go hand in hand.

If you attend a NASCAR event today, you’ll notice that peanuts aren’t sold anywhere near the property. Although they’re hailed as the go-to snack for baseball games, peanuts are linked to superstition in the world of car racing. In 1937, two significant wrecks took place, both resulting in several deaths. It’s said that peanut shells were found in the cockpit of both wrecked cars.

Other NASCAR drivers have also had their run-ins with peanut-related woes, including Junior Johnson who had an engine blow while a crew member was eating peanuts.

These are all pretty weird, huh? Perhaps we should make up some of our own food myths. Oranges fell from the sun. And ginger roots are actually little people!