We all carry a little backpack of food rules from childhood. Eat your carrots for better eyesight. Never eat after eight. Stay away from eggs if you care about your heart. Your parents said it with complete confidence, so it must be true, right? Well, here’s the thing: a surprising number of these rules trace their roots not to solid science, but to wartime propaganda, outdated medical consensus, and genuinely well-meaning misunderstandings. The good news is that researchers have been quietly dismantling these myths for years.
Some of the most stubborn food beliefs alive today are ones that were drilled into us before we could even read a nutrition label. Let’s dig into what the research actually says and prepare to rethink a few things you thought you knew. Let’s dive in.
Myth 1: Eggs Will Give You a Heart Attack
If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, there’s a solid chance eggs were treated like a forbidden food in your house. The cholesterol content of eggs made them the villain of breakfast tables worldwide, and countless adults spent decades requesting egg white omelets out of genuine fear. Eggs are a highly nutritious food offering a complete source of protein, containing all essential amino acids and a complement of vitamins and minerals. However, their high cholesterol content made them a food of concern, leading to a plethora of studies investigating egg consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. In pooled multivariable analyses, consumption of at least one egg per day was not associated with incident cardiovascular disease risk after adjustment for updated lifestyle and dietary factors. That is a meaningful finding from a large body of prospective research. Honestly, for most people eating eggs in a reasonably balanced diet, the fear was largely overblown.
Current evidence indicates that the intake of eggs is not associated with the risk of mortality in European populations. Limited evidence also suggests that intake of up to one egg per day is not associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events. The science, it turns out, was never as black and white as your parents believed.
Myth 2: The Egg Debate Is More Nuanced Than a Simple Ban
In analyses stratified by geographical location, no association was found between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease risk among U.S. or European cohorts, but an inverse association was actually seen in Asian cohorts, suggesting moderate egg consumption of up to one egg per day is not associated with cardiovascular disease risk overall. That detail gets overlooked in almost every family dinner conversation.
Think of it like this: blaming eggs for heart disease is a bit like blaming your umbrella for the rain. Other lifestyle factors, including smoking, physical inactivity, and a diet heavy in processed foods, play a far bigger role. Egg consumption has been reported to be correlated with other unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, unhealthy dietary patterns, and low physical activity, which muddied the science for many years.
The studies in a 2023 narrative review were all observational, and the findings were mixed. For CVD mortality specifically, an equal number of studies reported an increased risk or no association with the highest egg intake, similar to earlier reviews which also found mixed results. So if your parents banned eggs based on certainty, the reality is that even the experts were never in full agreement.
Myth 3: Carrots Give You Superhuman Night Vision
Let’s be real. Did you believe as a child that eating enough carrots would basically give you the eyes of a cat? Most of us did. The notion that carrots can improve eyesight came out of the early days of WWII, when the British were trying to disguise a superior new technology. That technology was airborne radar, not a vegetable-enriched diet.
The idea that carrots improve night vision is due to a myth begun by the Air Ministry in World War II. To prevent the Germans from finding out that Britain was using radar to intercept bombers on night raids, they issued press releases stating that British pilots were eating lots of carrots to give them exceptional night vision. Extraordinarily, what your parents told you at the dinner table originated in a military disinformation campaign.
Despite the fact that carrots improving eyesight was purely a propaganda campaign created by the British to hide their new radar technology, people continue to eat carrots today hoping their eyesight will improve. The myth outlived the war by about eight decades and counting. That is some seriously sticky misinformation.
Myth 4: What Carrots Can Actually Do for Your Eyes
To be fair to your parents, they weren’t completely wrong. There is a kernel of truth buried in the wartime spin. Carrots contain a pigment called beta carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. Not having enough of this vitamin can cause night blindness, a condition where it is difficult to see in low light, or even cause blindness in general. So vitamin A does matter for eye health.
If you have a vitamin A deficiency, eating carrots could help to correct and improve your night vision, but only to match the capabilities of an average person in ordinary health. It won’t give you the ability to see in complete darkness or at a higher than average level. That’s a very different claim from “eat carrots, see better,” which is what most kids were told.
For most people with adequate vitamin A levels, eating more carrots won’t further enhance night vision or give you the ability to see in the dark. The body regulates the amount of beta carotene it converts to vitamin A, so consuming excessive amounts of carrots won’t grant superhuman night vision abilities. Carrots are still a genuinely healthy vegetable, of course, but they’re no magic potion.
Myth 5: Eating After 8 PM Makes You Fat
This one lived rent-free in the minds of a whole generation. “No eating after eight” was a rule in households across the world, delivered with the kind of conviction usually reserved for things like “don’t play with fire.” The science here is actually more interesting and more complicated than a simple cutoff time would suggest.
Studies in humans indicate that it’s not necessarily the time you eat, but how much you eat that matters. For example, a study in over 1,600 children found no link between eating dinner past 8 PM and excess weight. The real villain wasn’t the clock. It was total calorie intake.
When it comes to weight gain or loss, it is not the time of day that makes the difference – it’s what you are consuming. That said, the picture isn’t entirely simple either. Research does suggest some relationship between meal timing and metabolism, but it’s nowhere near the clean rule your parents probably quoted.
Myth 6: The Real Reason Late Eating Gets a Bad Reputation
A 2022 study found that eating later in the day increases hunger, decreases the number of calories a person burns, and promotes fat storage. Over time, those effects could lead to weight gain. So there is something going on with meal timing and metabolism, but the relationship is more subtle than “food eaten after 8 PM magically becomes fat.”
It is true that some people may eat more at night because they’re bored or stressed, but that doesn’t mean eating at night causes weight gain. It’s the overconsumption of calories, not the timing of meals, that leads to weight gain. The habit of snacking mindlessly in front of television late at night is the real problem, not some metabolic witching hour.
Tiredness has been linked to increased food intake and a desire for high-calorie foods, possibly due to hormonal changes that influence appetite during sleep deprivation. Again, when it comes to weight gain, what you eat matters more than when you eat. So the advice should probably have been “don’t stress-eat chips at midnight” rather than setting a hard timer.
Myth 7: Sugar Makes Kids Hyperactive
Birthday parties. Halloween candy. Christmas morning. If you grew up hearing “don’t give the kids sugar or they’ll go crazy,” this section is for you. The sugar-hyperactivity link is one of the most persistent food myths in existence, and it has been thoroughly examined by science. The result might genuinely surprise you.
The idea of a “sugar rush” started gaining traction back in the 1970s, in large part thanks to a best-selling book by pediatric allergist Ben Feingold, who argued with little evidence that food additives including sugar are linked to excitable behavior in kids. However, the association between sugar and hyperactivity has since been thoroughly debunked in two thorough and well-regarded reviews of the research, in 1994 and 1995.
As Michael S. Kramer, a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University Faculty of Medicine, wrote in December 2023: “The firm belief in the sugar ‘high’ or ‘rush’ has persisted in the face of uniformly negative evidence from many randomized trials.” That is about as clear a scientific verdict as you can get.
Myth 8: Why the Sugar-Hyperactivity Myth Refuses to Die
Psychologists believe that the environment and anticipation surrounding sugary treats play a much bigger role in perceived hyperactivity than the sweets themselves. In one study, researchers gave all children a placebo with no actual sugar, but told half the mothers their children had received a large dose of sugar. Those mothers rated their children as significantly more hyperactive and exercised more control over them, even though no sugar was involved.
Scientists call this a “parental expectancy effect,” and it’s one of the main reasons this myth refuses to die. Think about that for a second. Parents literally saw hyperactivity that wasn’t there because they expected it. The mind is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to explaining a toddler’s chaos.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in the vast majority of children, and current evidence suggests that the association is a myth. This, however, does not discount the fact that a diet high in sugar increases the risk of diabetes, weight gain, tooth cavities, and heart disease. Sugar is genuinely worth limiting. Just not because of a birthday party meltdown.
Myth 9: All Fats Are Bad for You
For a long time, the word “fat” on a food label was treated like a warning sign. Low-fat products flooded supermarket shelves. Fat was enemy number one. Parents told children to avoid fatty foods as a blanket rule, and it seemed obvious. After all, fat makes you fat, right? It’s hard to say exactly how this simplification caused so much confusion, but the damage was real.
The World Health Organization has consistently noted that moderate fat intake, including healthy fats, is essential to overall health. The older belief that low-fat diets are always healthier has been significantly revised by modern nutritional science. Swapping fat for sugar in processed foods, which is exactly what the food industry did during the low-fat craze, turned out to be far worse for public health than fat itself.
Dietary fat comes in very different forms. Unsaturated fats found in olive oil, avocados, nuts, and fatty fish are genuinely protective when it comes to heart health, brain function, and inflammation. The blanket ban on fat that many parents enforced was well-intentioned but deeply misguided, and it may have done more harm than good by pushing families toward low-fat processed foods loaded with refined sugar.
Myth 10: “Good Foods” and “Bad Foods” Is a Broken Framework
Perhaps the biggest food myth of all isn’t about a single ingredient. It’s about the mental model we use to think about eating. The idea that certain foods are inherently “good” and others are inherently “bad” is a framework that shaped how millions of people relate to eating, and the science simply doesn’t support it in most cases.
The USDA Dietary Guidelines, which represent the current scientific consensus on healthy eating in the United States, emphasize that all foods can fit into a healthy dietary pattern. The “good food versus bad food” binary that many families taught is not how nutrition actually works. Context, frequency, quantity, and overall diet quality matter enormously, far more than any single food choice in isolation.
It’s hard to say for sure exactly how long these myths will persist, but surveys show that a significant proportion of adults still hold at least one outdated nutrition belief learned in childhood, according to public health communication studies from 2023 and 2024. That says something important about how powerfully childhood food messages stick around, even long after science has moved on. The dinner table, it turns out, might be one of the most influential classrooms most of us ever sat in.
The Takeaway: Your Parents Weren’t Wrong to Care
None of this is about blaming the people who raised us. The food myths covered here weren’t invented out of malice. They came from genuinely limited scientific understanding, effective propaganda, and the very human tendency to repeat advice that sounds sensible. The world of nutrition research has evolved dramatically in recent decades, and what seemed obvious in 1985 often looks very different through the lens of modern controlled trials and large-scale population studies.
The most useful thing we can do with this information isn’t to feel smug about how wrong the old rules were. It’s to stay curious, read widely, and hold our own current beliefs loosely. Nutrition science is still evolving. Some of what we believe today will almost certainly look outdated to the next generation. The goal is a healthy, balanced, flexible relationship with food, not a set of rigid rules inherited uncritically from the past.
So the next time someone tells you eggs will kill you, carrots will give you night vision, or that 9 PM snack is going straight to your hips, you now have the research to think a little differently. What food rule from your childhood would you like to finally put to rest?
