Food for Thought Part I

I expect this title will be used at least a few dozen times over the next several months so I decided to make it a franchise right out of the gates.

I have noticed a pattern of conversation that occurs when we tell people that Iris is expecting. First the congratulate us. Second, they note that the baby will be a dragon and finally they impose on us all their dietary wisdom about what to eat and what not to eat during a pregnancy. Some is good (i.e. folic acid) but the majority is abject nonsense. Case in point, this little morsel of stupidity offered up by someone the other day:

"Now that you are pregnant, don't eat spicy food. It will burn the baby's eyes and make it blind."

Spicy foods blind fetuses?

...

It is so hard to keep a straight face sometime when this stuff is flying as you. It takes all my power not to laugh at the people who say them. Naturally, I don't want to offend, but sometimes you just wish people would use a little common sense and critical thinking before they blindly (sorry) believe everything they hear. This myth shows a clear lack of vision (sorry) and perception (sorry).

First, why would spicy foods target only the eyes of the baby? Does capsicum have some sort of magnetic affinity toward ocular cavities? Why wouldn't the spicy food affect the gastrointestinal development or the the liver or the spleen? Why only the eyes? Seems a little specific for a simple bottle of Tabasco Sauce.

Second, if this myth were so, the world population of blind people would be astronomical! India alone would have a population of blind people into the tens of millions let alone Thailand, Mexico and Southern China. Braille books would outsell non-braille books and radio would still be a viable alternative to television. Our entire history would be completely different.

Third, it's just simply dumb. Really, really dumb.

I actually tried to find the origin of this myth in order to provide a little insight (sorry) into this myth. I wanted to see (sorry) whether it was strictly a Taiwanese brand of ignorance or whether it had a global market. The myth exists on the internet in English, but barely. However, I have heard this myth at least three or four times from people in the last few weeks. This leads me to believe that this myth might have a little more leg in Taiwan than other parts of the world. Not surprising considering Taiwan is an insular, navel-gazing culture on an island.

Imagine buying into this myth and eating nothing but curds and whey for nine months? Of course, curds and whey would probably cause chronic arachnophobia among infants.

Who's Pregnant? Hands UP!

When my wife and I first discovered she was pregnant with the Dragon we decided to share the news with our immediate families right away. The doctor's appointment that confirmed the pregnancy was at 1:00pm in Taiwan, which made it about 1:00am in Canada. My family would have to wait. My wife's family, however, could be notified immediately.

Iris immediately called her mother to notify her of the impending appearance of the Dragon. After the initial squeals and screams of excitement (along with a the Taiwanese requisite: "finally!") Iris's mom delivers this this golden nugget of superstition:

"Now, don't put your arms over your shoulders. It will make the umbilical cord wrap itself around the baby's neck and strangle it."

Right.

1. At that point in the pregnancy (4 weeks) The Dragon was only the size of a sharpened pencil tip and one could have wrapped the thinnest fishing wire around something that small.

2. By that logic, no woman in the history of this planet would have given birth to a live baby... Our Neolithic ancestors would have had a difficult time surviving if every female in the collective who was carrying a child was somehow expected to keep their hands firmly in the vicinity of their thighs. Gathering berries and nuts and hunting would have become difficult and I can't imagine a group of early homo sapiens surviving without the help of each member doing their part. Unless of course, this biological detriment was what caused our ancestors to come down from the trees in the first place (how do you climb a tree without raising your arms over your shoulders?

I mean can you imagine spending an entire nine months with your arms down? Never reaching up to get a glass from the cupboard. Never hailing a cab. Never adjusting the shower head. Never reaching for the box of Lucky Charms on the top shelf at the supermarket. And don't even get me started about obligations at work. How would pregnant women function with arms steadfastly at their sides? Imagine the lost revenue!

So where did this particularly restrictive piece of nonsense come from?

Well, this one is not restricted to Chinese/Taiwanese superstition. Turns out this one is prevalent in the west as well.

The truth is that the umbilical cord tangles itself around babies in about 1/3 of all pregnancies, especially among women whose fetus's move around a lot. Since 3/3 of all pregnant women raise their arms over their heads during pregnancy, one can imagine an old wife somewhere (probably Eastern Europe or China), upon the birth of a tangled baby noted that she had noticed the mother reaching up into the high cupboards for a wooden spoon prior to delivery. Given the respect bestowed upon medieval midwives (or Renaissance, or Victorian... I couldn't pinpoint the exact origin of this stupidity), respectable citizens started believing the myth along with other disciplines of quackery such as craniology and iridology.

Needless to say, Iris is (gasp!) to this day reaching for the cups on the high shelf (shock!) with nary a care in the world.

Well, duh.