You remember it well, since it happened every night. You sat at the dinner table with your family, staring at a pile of steamed spinach with a frown, listening to your mother tell you that "spinach is not only good for you, but it will make you strong, like Popeye!" Blah blah blah. You didn't listen. And it really didn't matter if it were spinach, broccoli, peas, or carrots.
But now, as an educated, intelligent, mature adult, you know that Mom was right. In fact, Mom was right about a lot of things. She may have had some twisted reasoning, but in the end, she was right. Here are eight things related to food that Mom was right about:
1. Don't eat too fast - Eating slowly allows your brain to catch up to your stomach. Besides, don't you want to enjoy the company of your date?
2. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" - An apple is so boring, especially now since that's probably the most common fruit you ate when you were in school. However, as mundane as an apple may be, what with accessibility to exotic fruits from all over the world, there's a reason apples are on Mayo Clinic's list of Ten Great Health Foods. In addition to pectin, a fiber that lowers cholesterol and glucose levels and vitamin C, an antioxidant that helps the body absorb iron and folate, apples contain quercetin, a flavonoid that serves as a building block for other flavonoids.
3. Wash your hands - Do I even have to explain this one? I'll let someone else do it.
4. Spinach will make you strong - Sing it with me now. "Popeye the sailor man..." It may not make you strong enough to be able to pop open a tin can with your bare hands like our favorite cartoon sailor, but WebMD does call it the "powerhouse of the vegetable kingdom" for phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals (especially folate and iron) that fight disease, protect against heart disease, and preserve your eyesight.
5. Always start your day with a hearty breakfast - I don't think I could count how many times I've heard dietitians and weight-loss experts advise us about how breakfast will help stave off binge-eating later in the day. Weight loss aside, a lot of breakfast foods are good for you: oatmeal, fruit, and yogurt.
6. If you're sick, eat chicken soup - It sure makes you feel good when someone is babying you by bringing a bowl of soup to you in bed, and that steam rising up from the bowl might temporarily clear the sinuses, but there might be some science behind it all. According to the Mayo Clinic, something about the broth "acts as an anti-inflammatory by inhibiting the movement of immune system cells that participate in the body's inflammatory response." And don't worry, if you're too sick to make it from scratch, most canned chicken soups were shown to have the same effects.
7. Don't go swimming right after eating - It's a myth. It's a fact. It's a myth. It's a fact. The arguments are pretty good for and against Mom, depending on what you want to believe. According to the American Red Cross, swimming right after eating is not "life-threatening." However, they do advise that going into the water before your body has properly digested a meal makes you susceptible to cramping or exhaustion. Just use your head. Now eating after swimming is a different story...
8. Eat all your vegetables - We've singled out spinach, but it really goes without saying that you should eat all your vegetables for there isn't a single one that doesn't have some sort of benefit, and better yet eat all kinds of vegetables.
What did I miss? What did your mother tell you when you were a kid for which you must give her credit now?
DIY Foods: Making homemade sausage
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
8-23-2006 @ 10:01PM
spline9 said...
"Dont make that face or it'll stick that way."
:(
Reply
8-24-2006 @ 2:37AM
Christopher said...
Actually, the saying should be "A banana a day keeps the doctor away." Bananas offer more nutritionally than apples.
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8-24-2006 @ 9:03AM
Jared said...
'The menus are in the drawer by the phone'.
Thanks mom!
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8-24-2006 @ 9:06AM
Angela Pitt said...
That's funny, all I ever heard was: "You're not
getting up until you clean that plate! And I'll know
if you threw it in the garbage!" Too bad we didn't have any pets. (You could call your list: "Mother's
Crazy 8s.")
Reply
8-24-2006 @ 1:22PM
Patrick Ashley said...
Amazing what cutting out sugar will do!
I had a friend of mine lose 30 pounds by just cutting out the six cans of Pepsi a day he was drinking...this, on a 300-pound man. I just wish we had a drug to do chemically what a gastric bypass does surgically.
Hopefully soon, Amylin will be delivering a new, very promising weight loss drug, an offshoot of the diabetic drug, Byetta - which does some amazing things to the appetite. People lose quite a bit of weight on the Byetta - and we're talking diabetics here! Having it for non-diabetics would be real interesting. I explore this topic at my site, byettaweightloss.com.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:11PM
Vicky said...
There are starving children all over the world, who would be grateful for this food. I hope you never have to go hungry......I said mail it to them and was grounded for a week
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8-29-2006 @ 2:15PM
bjb said...
I used to love to stand on my head against the wall. When my mother would see me she would hysterically admonish me by saying, "Get down from there, your liver is going to turn over!"
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8-29-2006 @ 2:15PM
Eboney said...
"Don't drink anything, until you finish eating."
My mom and sister always made me drink at the end of my meal because I would drink all of my juice/water, then I would be full. But around midnight, I'd wake my mom or sister up and ask for something to eat.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:15PM
bjb said...
I used to love to stand on my head against the wall. When my mother would see me she would hysterically admonish me by saying, "Get down from there, your liver is going to turn over!"
Reply
8-29-2006 @ 2:17PM
jenniferstewart said...
my mom to this day tells me chicken liverers eases cramps and they do a lot also that if it looks good eat it if not throw it away
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8-29-2006 @ 2:32PM
Pwinpo said...
your liver is going to turn over!
that is a real laugh
tickling will make you stutter
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8-29-2006 @ 2:32PM
Pattie Weaver said...
Potato skins and the heels and crusts of bread have all the vitamins in them...right? While in Moldova a few years ago we, of course, ate the skins of our baked potatos. This caused the children across the table to barely be able to stifle their giggles. We were informed only lazy people didn't take the time to remove the skins! After imparting my vast knowledge of potato skins the whole family ate their potato skins every meal!
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8-29-2006 @ 2:34PM
G.M.Hu said...
Mothers should never tell their kids to finish everything on the plate. Kids know when they are full and should be allow to stop eating. That's how some adult grew up to be obese, by in the habit of always cleaning everything on their plates.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:35PM
Millie said...
Amen to all of the above. If we only knew then what we know now. Stay away from sugar...it's poison.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:41PM
Surf said...
My mom made us eat Cherrios in the morning. We couldn't eat any candy or super-sugary cereals during the weekdays. During the weekends, we could eat whatever we wanted. She fixed healthy meals for dinner but she never got mad at me if I didn't finish everything on my plate. And we had a dog (thank god) so I could get rid of my liver and onions easily.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:41PM
JEB said...
I don't get too offended at folks hawking (spamming) yet another diet plan/diet drug that won't work...such as entry #5, above. What DOES irritate me is the fact that they seldom, if ever, address the issue of physical exercise. Eat right--you already know how. But get off your butt and exercise too.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:46PM
Lisa Kaster said...
My mother said it every morning, "Have some orange juice, it'll wake up your liver."
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8-29-2006 @ 2:49PM
Kel said...
My mom and dad would never make my brothers and I eat something that we didn't "like", they would instead have us try one bite, then if we actually didn't like it we didn't have to eat it ever.
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8-29-2006 @ 2:57PM
Keith Ninesling said...
The spinach information is wrong, as spinach being great for you is nonsense.
As spinach breaks down in your system, it draws nutrients out of other foods in your stomach and intestine and makes you pass the nutrients without properly or thoroughly utilizing them.
Instead of spinach, eat mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, and especially, kale. Each of these provide essentially the same benefit of spinach without shortchanging the other foods you're digesting.
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8-29-2006 @ 3:12PM
D said...
My mom always said, "You'd better eat that. Someone else just might want it, you know!" (Six kids in our family.) Also, "Here. Eat this so I won't have to throw it away."
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