My Mom Told Me....

 

My Mom used to tell us kids that raw cookie dough would give us worms.  I must have believed her because to this day I don't like raw cookie dough---even raw cookie dough ice cream, which I am pretty sure does NOT have actual raw cookie dough in it. 

Looking back I think she probably told us that so that she would have enough cookie dough to bake actual cookies.  With 4 of us rugrats under the age of 7, I am sure we were hard to corral, but the word "worms" shut us up quick!  I wasn't sure what she meant by us getting worms but I could just picture the worms we baited our fishing hooks with crawling all over me in the middle of the night and I was not having ANY of that.  She must have seen how effective this tactic was because according to her we could "get worms" from eating raw potatoes and uncooked spaghetti too.  Where that combination came from, I'll never know, but those three forms of food have become synonymous with "worm magnets" in my mind.  I would never let my son eat any of these three things becase Mom's words were still ringing in my ears. 

Doing a little online research I did find that regarding the cookie dough, the concern is that the raw eggs in cookie dough can lead to Salmonella.  So, while my mom probably did not know about the Salmonella poisoning aspect, she had an instinct that told her to keep us from consuming something questionable.  Also in Mom's defense, Salmonella bacteria, under a microscope, look like worms.  So I'm good with that.  It also turns out that years ago raw or undercooked potatoes were associated with Trichinella which is a parasitic roundworm, and while it's vitrually unheard of in modern times, I say "better safe than sorry".  I have not found anything that would cause me to believe that raw spaghetti will lead to worms, but maybe Mom was short on spaghetti noodles for dinner that night and didn't want us to shorten her supply further.  Why we would want to eat raw potatoes or pasta escapes me to this day. 

Now, on to another pressing question of my childhood:  Will eating more than one Flintstone vitamin a day make one of my arms grow longer than the other? 

Mom sure knew how to get our attention.  Being deformed AND wormy was the last thing any of us kids wanted----stay tuned.  Google, here I come.