Thirty-plus years in kitchens — professional and home — and I still hear the same myths passed around like gospel. Some of them came from grandmothers. Some came from TV chefs. Some came from wartime propaganda, which I'll explain in a minute. Here's the truth about some of the most stubborn food myths floating around out there.
Cooking & Kitchen Myths
"Searing meat seals in the juices."
This one is ancient — and wrong. The idea goes back to a German chemist named Justus von Liebig in the 1800s, and it has been getting repeated ever since. Here's what actually happens: high heat draws moisture out of meat, not in. What searing does do is create the Maillard reaction — that complex, savory crust flavor that makes a well-cooked steak taste like a well-cooked steak. The flavor is real. The "seal" is fiction. Don't skip the sear — just know what it's actually doing for you.
BUSTED — but sear it anyway"Add oil to pasta water to keep it from sticking."
Oil floats. Water doesn't mix with oil. So what exactly are you expecting to happen here? The oil sits on top of the boiling water and does absolutely nothing while the pasta cooks. Worse, when you drain the pasta, that oil coats it — and now your sauce has nothing to grab onto. Salt your water. Stir your pasta. That's the actual answer.
BUSTED"Rinse your raw chicken before cooking it."
I know it feels like the clean thing to do. It's not. Rinsing raw poultry splashes bacteria — we're talking Salmonella, Campylobacter — all over your sink, your counter, and anything nearby. The only thing that kills those bacteria is proper cooking to the correct internal temperature (165°F). The rinse does nothing for safety and creates a contamination risk in the process. Stop doing it.
STOP DOING THIS"Let leftovers cool down before putting them in the fridge."
Old-school advice that food safety experts have reversed. The idea was that hot food would raise the fridge temperature and damage everything else inside. Modern refrigerators handle it fine. Meanwhile, letting food sit out to cool means it's spending extra time in the bacterial "danger zone" between 40°F and 140°F. Get it in the fridge. Sooner is better.
OUTDATED — refrigerate now"Raw cookie dough is dangerous because of the eggs."
The eggs are only half the story. Raw flour is an unprocessed agricultural product that can carry E. coli and Salmonella just like eggs can. Several major recalls in recent years were flour, not eggs. If you're making edible dough to eat raw — which people are definitely going to do — heat-treat the flour. Spread it on a baking sheet and run it through a 350°F oven for about 5 minutes. That's the step most people skip.
PARTIALLY TRUE — watch the flour too"Alcohol fully cooks off in the pan."
Not even close. A dish that's flambéed and served immediately retains roughly 75% of its alcohol. Simmer something for 15 minutes and you still have about 40% left. You need to cook something for nearly three hours to get below 5%. This matters if you're cooking for someone who's in recovery, someone with religious dietary restrictions, or a kid. Know what's in your pan.
BUSTEDNutrition & Ingredient Myths
"MSG is bad for you."
This is one of the most stubbornly persistent food myths of the last 50 years, and it started with a single letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968. Dozens of double-blind studies have since failed to reproduce sensitivity to MSG at normal dietary levels. Meanwhile, parmesan, tomatoes, soy sauce, mushrooms, and anchovies are all naturally packed with glutamates — the same compound — and nobody's staging a boycott. The science is clear. The stigma is not.
BUSTED — thoroughly"Carrots improve your eyesight."
This one was invented. During World War II, the British Royal Air Force was using newly developed radar technology to spot German planes at night. They didn't want the Germans to know about the radar, so they credited their pilots' success to eating lots of carrots. The propaganda worked so well it's still circulating 80 years later. Here's the truth: vitamin A in carrots supports eye health and can prevent vision problems caused by deficiency — but if you already have normal vision, eating more carrots will not give you better eyesight. That's not how any of this works.
WARTIME PROPAGANDA"Sugar causes hyperactivity in kids."
Study after study — we're talking controlled, double-blind research — has failed to find a link between sugar consumption and hyperactivity in children. What parents are actually observing is context: the birthday party, the excitement, the sugar and twenty other kids running around. Pull the sugar out of the equation and the excitement stays. The "sugar rush" is a placebo effect combined with the situation. The science has been settled on this for decades. It just hasn't made it out of the parenting conversation yet.
BUSTED — it's the party, not the cake"Fresh produce is always more nutritious than frozen or canned."
"Fresh" is a marketing word as much as it's a nutrition descriptor. Produce starts losing nutrients the moment it's harvested. A tomato that was picked before peak ripeness, gassed on a truck for four days, and then sat in a grocery display for two more days has lost a significant amount of its original nutrition. Frozen vegetables, on the other hand, are typically flash-frozen at peak ripeness and can retain more vitamins and minerals than that "fresh" alternative. Canned works the same way. Don't sleep on the freezer section.
NUANCED — frozen can win"Spicy food generates actual heat in your mouth."
Capsaicin doesn't actually raise your temperature. It binds to the same pain receptors (TRPV1) that respond to real heat — so your brain gets tricked into thinking it's burning. No actual temperature change happens. This is also why ice water barely helps — there's nothing to cool down. Milk works not because it's cold, but because casein protein physically binds to capsaicin and washes it away. Fat-free milk still helps for the same reason. Water doesn't.
YOUR BRAIN IS LYING TO YOUThe Fun Ones
Froot Loops are all the same flavor.
Despite being different colors, every ring in a box of Froot Loops shares the same blended "froot" flavor — not individual fruit flavors. Kellogg's has confirmed this. The colors are there for visual marketing, not taste distinction. Worth noting there's been some minor regional reformulation over the years, but the original design: one flavor, many colors.
TRUEThe green Haribo gummy bear is strawberry-flavored.
In the original Haribo Gold-Bears lineup, the green bear is strawberry. The red bear is raspberry. People argue about this constantly at every party where gummy bears appear. Now you have the receipts.
TRUE — win your next argumentBaby carrots are just regular carrots, cut and polished.
They're not a special variety grown to be small. Baby carrots are typically full-grown carrots that were misshapen or imperfect — cut down, peeled, and tumble-polished into that uniform little nub shape. They exist because someone figured out a way to sell imperfect carrots instead of throwing them away. Perfectly edible. But definitely not babies.
TRUEMore from the kitchen at TyroneBCookin
If you've been feeding me myth-based cooking advice for years, now you know why some of it wasn't working. Check out the Kitchen Best Buys page for gear that's actually worth it — and the TeePublic store if you want to rep the brand.
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