Common Food Myths That Have Been Fooling Us All

There are a lot of myths about food that get passed around. Oral recounts of histories, recipes, and personal experiences are bound to get muddled with each passing decade, and, let's face it: food has been around for a long time. There's a lot to get wrong. Even the smartest people in the world might be guilty of repeating some of these common food myths — but we're here to set the record straight.

1. Dairy Queen sells ice cream

As Dairy Queen notes on its website, "To be categorized as ice cream [by the Food and Drug Administration], the minimum butterfat content must be 10 percent, and our soft serve has only 5 percent butterfat content." That's why you'll never see the fast food chain promoting authentic ice cream on its menu!

2. The "Five-Second Rule"

Despite what you were told, no matter if five seconds pass or ten seconds, once you drop food on the floor, it's already got germs, which start crawling onto food right when it makes contact with a surface. The number of germs might change based on how wet the food is. Watermelon collects much more than a pretzel.

3. Cage-Free chickens are raised humanely

The label you spot on eggs to make yourself feel better was always a lie. While cage-free birds technically live free from, well, cages, they are still imprisoned for life in overcrowded, cramped buildings they can hardly move in. Is that better than a cage? Maybe.

4. The "use by" date is an expiration date

Have you ever had dinner determined for you by a fast-approaching use by date slapped on the front of your chicken tenders? While meats and other products will likely taste best before that deadline, foods are usually still safe to eat beyond the suggested date.