Superstitions can fill peoples lives with a bit of innocent fun, but they can also be incredibly crippling. This is a list of some of the more unusual superstitions that surround food. Many of these superstitions derive from Great Britain, and therefore ultimately found their way around the world through colonization.
It was once (and perhaps still is) a superstition that if you found a hole in a loaf of bread you cut, it symbolized a coffin and meant that someone was soon to die. If a person found a loaf in this state, there would be days of discussion to guess who it might be that would be stricken down. Of course, these days we are less likely to cut our own loaves of bread, so this one is likely to die into obscurity.
It was once a superstition that if you did not crush the ends of an egg after eating it, a witch would gather the shells and use them to craft a boat that she could use to sail out to sea to raise storms. This is a very ancient superstition which seems to originate in the 1580s. If you shattered the end of the shell, it would create enough holes to make it useless as a boat. We won’t even go into the logic of how a full-sized human might be able to stand in an egg shell – that was obviously not on the minds of our superstitious forebears.
This innocent old superstition dictated that all loaves of bread must be marked with a sign of the cross before baking. The idea was that the cross would prevent the devil from sitting on the loaf – and thereby prevent him from cursing or spoiling the bread. The upside to this superstition is that bread rises much better in the oven when crossed – though obviously not from the influence (or lack thereof) of the wicked one.
We all know of the superstition surrounding the spilling of salt, but here is a slightly more unusual one. It used to be considered bad if you helped another person to the salt – there was even a little phrase that evolved from the superstition: “help to salt, help to sorry.” Salt is such an important part of human life that it is no wonder that it appears so frequently in the history of superstition.
It used to be considered bad luck for two people to pour tea from the same pot. In addition, if you left the lid off the teapot while brewing tea, it was meant to mean that a stranger would visit soon. There were even a series of small rituals you could perform to determine the exact day, hour, and gender of the visitor by means of tapping the wrist.
Superstitions surrounding Christmas are as numerous as Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands. One such superstition says that all members of a family must have a turn stirring the Christmas cake mixture or else bad luck will befall them. Young unmarried girls were especially supposed to have a turn – otherwise they would remain alone for another year.
In many parts of Europe, farmers would take a fresh egg into the fields in the hopes that it would bring a good healthy crop. Eggs were also used to tell fortunes – two yolks would mean a marriage was coming up soon, a black spot on a yolk was a bad omen – and an egg with no yolk at all was just about as bad as you could get.
In Greece there is an ancient superstition called the Evil Eye. It is believed that when someone gives you the evil eye, bad luck (usually minor) will befall you. Now you may be wondering why this is on a food superstitions list; the reason is that the way to prevent the evil eye from affecting you is to carry around a piece of garlic. This is unlikely to help you when you are having a night out looking for a date!
Before we all sit back on our laurels and laugh at the superstitions around the world that would never afflict us; let us remember one of our own most revered superstitions, the pulling of the wishbone. In Western (especially American and British) tradition, two people use their pinky finger to break the wishbone. The person who wins the longest piece gets good luck and usually makes a wish. We may all say we aren’t superstitious – but this is something we have all done at one time or another which leads us to our last (and equally common) superstition:
Throwing rice at a wedding is such a common event that we don’t even bat an eyelid when we see it happening. But what most of us don’t realize is that this a very superstitious tradition with a very long history. The throwing of rice is meant to bring prosperity, wealth, and happiness to the couple. Frankly though, with the amount of money people spend on weddings these days, it would be more useful to throw wads of cash rather than rice.
i dont think i knew any of these… except the rice…. cool
I’ll say #10 is fading into obscurity… I’ve never even heard of it, but I find holes in bread all the time (I bake it with extra yeast). Interesting list!
Oh and #2, I still do this but I dont believe in it, its just fun, I alway lose.
The hollow bread one is new to me, I bake my own bread and am always finding holes in it!
Meh, slightly boring list for a 19 year old boy.
And what’s with the new layout, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it James!
We British are a strange breed…
Loved this list, there were some superstitions I had never heard of… Suppose they belong more in the anglosaxon tradition; the one about the eggshells is awesome anyway, and I sort of suspected the wishbone was linked with good luck and granted wishes (hence the english name), although in my region the wishbone has a different use: one is supposed to think of a pregnant woman they know, and if they end up with the biggest half of the bone, the baby will be a boy; the pregnant lady the other person is pulling the bone for will of course get a girl. Last time I did this, I correctly predicted my friend’s baby would be a girl!
Wedding rice is stupid… think about all the starving children in the world?!!
Eggs are special… this one time in band camp a girl had to eat 6 raw eggs and she got really horny and she started making funny noises with her mouth and she danced and took her cloths and she showed her privates to the people and she whispered in my ear dirty words and then… sorry wrong story I was thinking of my moms wedding day…..
Hehehe I remember eating boiled eggs as a child and my Mum telling me to break the bottom out of the egg when I was finished. When I asked why she gave the reason as explained in #9. Even as a child I was like “wtf?” lol.
I remember reading another superstition about bread as well, that it is not meant to be sliced at both ends at once – otherwise the Devil will be able to escape (from inside the loaf of bread) and fly about the room. Hmmmmmm…..
the ‘evil eye’ one is quite common in most asian/south asian traditions too. unfortunatly my mum still believes in it…
Appetizing guns on the list, g. In a Chinese guide book they say never to flip over a fish as it may capsize a boat, but I ain’t seen any heed paid to that yet yo.
I have a slightly different version for #9…
My Grandfather used to tell me that you must break the eggshell after you’re finished eating it, or else the egg will “come back” poisoned…
I still do it and I have taught my children to do the same.
You don’t want to mess with a poisoned egg.
Ironically, our family forgot the rice/confetti at our wedding… blast, we’re doomed!!
And the witches might be able to shrink down to use the egg boat! They’re witches after all!!
I’ve been guilty of doing the wishbone breaking and the salt over the shoulder when spilled superstition.
cool…
nice new layout!!!!
@Travis “Wedding rice is stupid… think about all the starving children in the world?!! ”
I think the last thing those starving kids want is more rice…
Koreans believe it’s good luck if you find a grain of rice still in its husk- but rice is more processed now I think, so this is less likely than back in the day.
Also, kimchi prevents cancer, obesity, scurvy, and probably makes you taller, a faster runner and better in bed. The Koreans are full of food superstitions.
@H3000 : Oh yeah I forgot the kids from somalia and ethiopia are very picky on what they eat!!!
Why wont those kids want rice?
Kimchi is very delicious and nice smelling. Most Americans have bad taste.
Most Aussie’s I know do the whole wishbone thing too.
It’s not just Us and Brits.
Oh and Travis ure funny
. Even now the prices of rice is shooting up. Ponni rice from India once doubled.
Westerners don’t know how its like. There you eat oat, corn, barley, wheat, potato and stuff like that. Here rice is our staple food. We eat porridge with rice.
We can add fish, vegetables, chicken, prawns, century egg or if you add soya sauce, white pepper and black pepper sauce you can easily change the flavour to suit your taste. Here everyone eats porridge.
Unlike oatmeal, you can barely modify the flavour at all.
is it just me, or does the ‘devil’s’ posterior have eyes and sumhow a face?
if it is always depicted that way, pardon me
I love the egg superstition. I might start breaking my shells just in case
It has been REALLY rainy here lately and I’ve been eating a lot of eggs. Coincidence? I think not.
@Choosilicious : I love rice so much I can eat rice with rice!! in fact I wish we only had rice… I wish I could give each person on this forum a little bag of rice so we could eat rice while we read the lists!!!
I’m gonna make list of the best things about rice and send it to the contest!!
dude u forgot a good its said that when u eat beans u will fart all day. lol
@Travis, I was obviously kidding. It’s just that all those kids get to eat now, is rice. There’s way more things being wasted than rice.
i like this list, i was thinking about weird superstitions and their origins earlier, so this felt like a touch of synchronicity.
only one thing, with the eggshell one: “This is a very ancient superstition which seems to originate in the 1580s.” ???
when i read “very ancient” i was expecting to hear that it went back thousands of years to the ancient chinese or greeks or something, so you may want to rethink the term “very ancient” here jamie
@H3000 : what is more wasted than rice? please do enlighten me!! people treat rice like there are millions still to come! rice is a precious vegetable that we take for granted and i will not stand here and listen to people bad mouthing rice… enough is enough! its time to stand up and be counted… grain by grain!
Enough with the food lists! jeez!
Number 10 ia absolutely true! There´s holes in every single bread I eat and yes, lots of people die every day! Somebody stop this breadbaking madness! Now!
I always win when pulling the wishbone at Thanksgiving but it never brings me any luck!!
In addition to it being a US, British and Australian (says Kez) tradition, we Canadians also partake.
Jesus Travis, I’m not saying rice doesn’t get wasted, rice is definitely the gift from heaven you’re making it out to be. However, you can’t possibly think rice isn’t the only thing being wasted can you? Thousands of kilo’s of leftovers get thrown away all over the world every night and millions of cartons of milk lay rotten in refridgerators until tossed away. Bad examples but all food gets wasted, not just rice.
“I always win when pulling the wishbone at Thanksgiving but it never brings me any luck!!”
The fact that you always win is pretty lucky in itself isn’t it?
A popular tradition among people from the South is always cook Black Eyed Peas on New Years Day and you will have a prosperous year.
@H3000 : I’m sorry I got carried away back there… It’s just that people think rice “grows on trees” and according to wikipedia it actually grows under water.
My grandfather planted rice and my father planted rice and soon when i reach the age of 30 I will too plant rice and hope that my children pass their maths class so they can plant rice!
@ Travis- Firstly; rice is a grain, not a vegetable. Second, I have volunteered with an organization to package foodstuffs that were going abroad to disaster areas and impoverished nations, the main ingredient is rice! Now, something many of you will not know, because you’ve never been poor enough to have to subsist almost entirely on rice, but white rice will constipate and bloat you, because it’s nothing but starch with no bran left on it to move it along. Also, the rice is not wasted, I promise you. The local birds and other wildlife come back behind and eat whatever is left there.
@ Choosilicious- Please, please tell me you were joking! I live in the US, and I DO know what it’s like to be poor. Pay no heed to what they tell you on the television. Many Americans would be homeless and starving without their credit cards to keep them afloat by supplementing their income – which is a horrible financial policy to have! Even with credit cards, many families must have three and even four incomes just to survive. It is the way in this country for the rich to become richer and the rest to become poorer. So please, before you spout off with hate at the West, remember that all is not as it’s shown to you over there, and that some of us really do understand just how bad it really is.
As for the list – Great job! There were many of these I hadn’t heard of before. However, I do need to point out that I’d always heard that rice was thrown at weddings to ‘bless’ the newlyweds with fertility in their marriage, i.e. them having lots of children, and quickly. This was supposed to date back to ancient times when having lots of children was a good idea, as they were often required to help run the farm or family business.
Here’s a link that explains part of what I have stated, and also mentions the prosperity part:
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/rice.asp
20. Kez : You from down south? Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide *cringes at having to type that in*? Because in Queensland – I’m in Rockhampton, which is about half way between Brisbane and Townsville – we don’t partake in wishboning
Shadow, that’s exactly what I was trying to say, i’m just not as smart.
In many locales in the U.S. the throwing of rice at weddings has been banned due to the belief (I don’t know whether it’s true or not, so please don’t berate me) that birds eat the uncooked rice, it swells in their stomachs and they die. Birdseed is thrown instead. Which should please Travis, I think.
If you throw rice at a wedding, birds eat it and their stomachs explode.
I once got an egg with three yolks. It was HUGE and took me about 3/4 of an hour to eat. BEAT THAT, PEOPLE!
Another that I know about bread is that if you leave the knife stuck in a loaf, it means something bad will befall whoever stuck it there.
Also, don’t like the new layout. Feels too simple. I liked the old one more.
For the people dissing the Evil Eye, please don’t; it DOES exist.
37 – “we don’t partake in wishboning”
Is that what you crazy kids are calling it now? It used to be just boning? Is the wish- preffix a testimony to the angst of the teenage youth?
lol
39. Randy – Hah, you beat me to it!
I’m WAITING for some moron to repeat the ridiculous fallacy that throwing rice at weddings is wrong because birds eat it, drink water, and then the rice expands in their stomachs, killing them. PLEASE someone come on and repeat that idiotic claim so I can tear you apart. I haven’t had any fun this week.
(Because of that idiotic notion, people stopped throwing rice at weddings for a while, in the 90s… and started throwing birdseed. Or worse—and far more pukey—they’d release butterflies. GAAACK. Please, *****s. These pinheads never stopped to think that birds eat rice IN THE WILD and get along just fine, and that this idea of it expanding in their gullets was just nonsense anyway… cripes).
OH, and by the way, Travis… you’re an idiot.
The amount of rice “wasted” by being thrown at weddings wouldn’t save a whole lot of starving children, pinhead. It ain’t like we’re greedily stealing bags of rice out of the hands of the needy so we can toss them at a couple of losers in a tacky dress and a rented suit.
But if you want to do good, why don’t YOU stop wasting food yourself—as we in the West surely do, on a daily basis—and stop eating so much? And then send the food you’re not eating to the kids in Africa and Asia who could make better use of it? Better still, let’s get science to work on increasing food production WHERE these people are, which is what they really need.
Luckily we’ve already accomplished this over the last 40 years, increasing food production exponentially. Let’s hope we can keep on doing it.
Maybe, Travis, what you should think about is going to school to learn how to help with this… OR, if you’re not smart enough, then vote and lobby to give more financial aid to other people who WILL go into the sciences, particularly in agriculture, and help with this global need.
But okay, Travis, failing that you can go around griping about people who toss rice. Sure.
44. Randall – o.0 I didn’t say anything. *crouches and waits for him NOT to kill me*
RANDY went and did it before I even got my comment out! (And how ironic it should be someone named “Randy”).
But you’re excused, namesake, because you simply repeated the nonsense without asserting it’s truth.
It isn’t true. Some people just believe stupid things.
“If you throw rice at a wedding, birds eat it and their stomachs explode. ”
*facepalm*
Really? Then why don’t we see hundreds of birds bursting at trafalgar square during rag week through student pranks? If students will steal cadavars from morgues to qualify for car pooling, then this would be a relative no brainer for them.
I shall answer my own question
Because rice has no negative effect on the stomach of birds.
42. cymraegbachgen87 : *face-slap followed by suitably disdainful look*
42. cymraegbachgen87 – You make a good point. XD
cymraegbachgen87: (I hate typing all that, can’t you just shorten it to some other form—oops, no, I forgot. Welsh. We’re lucky your nickname has VOWELS).
Bless you, between the two of us we’ll destroy this ridiculous notion.
Interesting list. I have not heard of most of these, besides te obvious rice and wish bone.
My dad bakes his own bread occasionally and whenever I find a piece/load with a whole in the center, I always get an uncomfortable feeling and decline to eat the bread. Maybe my conscience was telling me something?
And I eat a lot of eggs, and lately I’ve been having bad luck, maybe I should start cracking the ends of mine.
And for all you people going ape***** over the rice fiasco: people throw away tons of food without even for superstisious sake, so I think it is okay to carry on this tradition. I know that in life we should not be wasteful, but I also think we should LIVE life. Something as small as throwing rice on newlyweds is not going to destroy the world or kill anyone.
51. The settled upon LV shortening of my name is cym. That makes a modicom of sense usually used as a prefix for welshness
Annoys me when its shortened to cymrae, or cymraegba…they don’t mean anything!
“We’re lucky your nickname has VOWELS” Ironic seeing as my given name doesnt
And no I’m not going to tell you what it is.
However annoying these fallacies are, its interesting to see how they made it into the public consciousness. But they deserve to be busted.
throwing rice at weddings is wrong because birds eat it, drink water, and then the rice expands in their stomachs, killing them.
…haha….I also think it’s ridiculous, but I posted that because I was wondering if your head would explode, Randall.
Doves at weddings are worse than butterflies! People don’t realize that not only do you need to hire a professional to release said doves, but they also don’t realize that doves won’t hold their poo just because it’s your wedding day.
I love this list!
Randall,
Why don’t you eat rice and explode!! You’re an ass. Birds indigenous to the US and UK CANNOT digest rice and although they will not explode, it can kill then. Name one bird in the US or UK you know of that eats rice in the wild. And even if they did it would not be the packed, processed rice that humans eat. You’re a pompous, idiotic *****!!!
@Randall : why did you call me an idiot? I didn’t offend you in anyway and neither did the dude with the strange name!! I really wish you had an accident and got blind and def, and with no arms or legs and with poor medical assistance you would get aids from a needle and die alone in a hole filled with *****!!
I’ll through some rice for that to happen!
that is all… thank you!
Travis:
You’re laboring under a misconception. It is not necessary for me to be offended in order for you to be an idiot. One has nothing to do with the other.
And hey, thanks for the good wishes. That was actually quite creative.
…the dude with the strange name…
That is all I am reduced to!?
I’m going to find a quiet corner somewhere and cry :’(
BTW – massive over-reaction just for being called an idiot. The fact you would wish AIDS on someone is disgusting. Either retort sensibly or do not ‘grace’ us with your presence again.
“but I posted that because I was wondering if your head would explode, Randall”
I must be in a wierd mood today…cos that sounds mildly erotic.
Dirty cym, DIRTY cym!