If you grew up in Nigeria, you know one thing for sure: drinking garri when the weather is cold is going to make your stomach swell. There is no scientific backing for this myth and it has been disproved over and over, however, it has managed to endure.
There are several other myths surrounding food that Nigerians just love to throw around in conversation, sometimes as a joke and sometimes in a semi-serious manner. Which short person hasn’t been told that his height is as a result of not eating enough beans as a child?
Of course most of these myths are told to children to get them to do (or not do) certain things but as those they children grow into adulthood and discover the myths are untrue, they in turn tell their children the same things.
Here are a few more Nigerian food myths to tickle you:
- Drinking coconut water will make you unintelligent.
- If you eat snails, your growth in life will be slowed down (members of a popular Nigerian church do not eat snails for this reason).
- Eating fish eyes have the dual function of making your eyeballs big and making you unintelligent. Eating fish head also reduces our mental capacity. One might as well avoid fish all together
- If you’re eating something and it falls to the ground, don’t pick it up because the devil has tasted it. Apparently the devil only lives in Nigeria.
- If you eat the hindquarters of a chicken, you’ll become a talkative.
- Eat snails while pregnant and you baby will drool a lot.
- If a man eats the balls of a goat, he gains virility.
- An orphan shouldn’t eat in the dark, else his dead parents will come and eat with him. Spooky.
- Always eat meat last. It shows that you’re not a glutton.
- If you eat standing by a door post you won’t get filled. In fact standing when eating is bad because the food will go straight to your feet.
- Swallowing fruit seeds is a sure way to have a tree grow in your stomach.
- There are two food combinations that cause sure death: mango and drinking garri, mango and coke. No one knows where this comes from. There are stories to back it up but no one has actually seen it happen.
- A pregnant woman who eats amala and ewedu will give birth to a small baby.
- If you give a child too much meat and eggs with every meal, the child will become a thief.