Few childhood rituals are as memorable as a Saturday morning meal with my grandparents. Like most members of the Greatest Generation, my grandfather ate eggs and bacon for breakfast, slathered his toast with real butter and drank coffee with every meal. My grandmother made sure we never went away hungry. Both lived well into their 90s.
Today, I can scarcely bite into bacon, crack an egg or put a knife to butter without feeling a pang of guilt. Not to mention my compulsion to drink eight glasses of water a day, fill my shopping bags with organic food and snatch sugary treats from the grasps of my children. And don't get me started on the penance I pay at the gym for eating a late-night bowl of ice cream.
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But what if I have it all wrong? What if we all do? If you've ever wondered whether there's any truth to the long-held beliefs that replay in your head as you pick up a menu, grab items from the grocery store or fix yourself a midnight snack, read on. We're investigating 10 food falsehoods so ingrained in American culture that we don't always know how they got there. Usually a dash of science got mixed up with "common sense" –- like the myth on our next page.