Lies About Your Parents Tells You About Food

- Eating carrots does not give you night vision: During World War II, British Intelligence didn't want Germany to be aware of the newly developed radar technology assisting the Royal Air Force in shooting down enemy planes before they reached the English Channel. The government began planting stories in the papers, profiling an RAF pilot who credited his uncanny accuracy to his love of Vitamin A and beta carotene-containing carrots. Carrots are great for healthy eyesight, but won't make an avid chomper into a super-seer.

- Eating too many carrots can turn you orange (or at least a muted yellow-orange color): Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, a highly pigmented compound. An extreme excess of carotene in the bloodstream will build up under your skin, causing an yellow-orange discoloration (mostly evident on the bottom of the feet and palm of the hands). To get rid of the harmless orange hue, just lay off the carrots and other orange vegetables (like sweet potatoes) for a bit.

- Hot, spicy foods on a sweltering day will cool you down: Fiery foods raise your body temperature slightly, bringing heat to the skin's surface and causing you to sweat. This perspiration will ultimately cause your body to cool down by evaporative cooling (temperature reduction through the evaporation of water).

- Spinach makes you strong, but not that strong: Spinach was originally selected as Popeye's power source because of a German study which mistakenly attributed the vegetable with ten times the iron it actually packs. When the mistake was corrected in 1937, Popeye had already been gorging on the stuff for years and it was too late to backtrack.

- Chocolate doesn't cause acne: 1950s dermatology books made the claim that chocolate causes acne, asserting that because chocolate is rich in fat and sebum (oil), consuming chocolate would cause the sebaceous glands to be affected. No studies have been able to show any association between chocolate and acne. To the contrary, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently reported that the flavanoids (antioxidants) in dark chocolate may actually help regulate sebum production, thus helping with acne.

- Gum doesn't stay in your stomach for seven years: It's true that gum is indigestible, but it passes through the body's waste system like any food would.