Eating cherries and drinking milk will make you sick. That's what my grandma told me, and for a long time I never questioned it. I just never had cherries and milk at the same time. Then one fateful day....I did it. I must not have been thinking, or maybe it was latent rebellion...whatever it was, I ate a handful of cherries and drank some ice cold milk. And you know what? I didn't get stomach cramps. I didn't throw up. I didn't double over in pain. I was fine. This got me to thinking. Is the cherries and milk tale a myth? Is it an old wives tale? Is it just something invented by a mere coincidence?

I started looking for answers. This is what I found. Zachary Taylor, our twelfth president spent July 4, 1850 eating cherries and milk at a ceremony at the Washington Monument. He got sick in the heat, and died five days later. Did ol' Zack die from cherry and milk poisoning? Very doubtful. Most accounts believe that the stomach ailment that Zachary Taylor died from may have been cholera. But ever since that time, mothers and grandmothers all across the United States have warned their children against eating cherries and drinking milk. Interestingly, I didn't find this taboo existing outside the US.