The Salad: A Tasty Logical Fallacy
There’s a great local legend where I live, in the Los Angeles area. A local restaurant serves a salad that is supposed to make overdue women go into labor. It is called “The Salad.” And it’s delicious. Even if you are not expecting a baby, I recommend it! The restaurant actually has piles and piles of journals with entries from women who have tried The Salad. Some come back after they give birth to update that The Salad worked for them.
This is a great example of a post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Obviously, women who are past their due date are going to give birth any day. So they eat The Salad, go into labor, and attribute the onset of labor to The Salad.
One day, in a prenatal yoga class, a couple came by to show off their new baby. “By the way,” said the husband, “The Salad doesn’t work!” He detailed his and his wife’s efforts to induce labor. I was thinking that he had possibly learned that the whole myth of The Salad was a post-hoc fallacy, until he said, “What finally worked was Thai food! We ate it, and she went into labor that night!”
So there you have it. Whatever you eat the day you give birth gets the credit for bringing your child into the world. It couldn’t possibly be that you were nine months pregnant, after all!
As it happened, my son was not only late but seemed to have no intention of making an appearance. The days after my due date crept slowly by. My husband and I would wake up every day, both off from work, with no idea of how to occupy ourselves. Invariably, we would somehow end up at Target or Babies R Us, buying more stuff for the child we hoped would come soon. The eleven days of waiting were beneficial for the economy of baby goods, thanks to us.
I thought for sure my doctor would want to induce labor, but I did not dilate or efface or in any other way progress. He proclaimed me “not even close to induceable.” And as we waited for anything at all to happen, my son grew inside me to record levels. Even now, he is quite literally “off the charts,” and he was a very big baby when he was born. Had I ever started labor, I would have argued to try to do things the old fashioned way, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I simply never began to labor at all, and a final late ultrasound revealed that our baby was like a ship in a bottle inside me.
My doctor scheduled a c-section.
I was disappointed with this outcome, and as a lark to cheer me up, my husband and I went to Caioti Café and ordered The Salad. We grabbed the journals, and I wrote something to the effect that The Salad would definitely work for me, since I knew for sure I was giving birth the next day! If I actually went into labor, I joked, I would chuck out my beliefs in science.
The waitress saw us laughing and said, “No, you’ve got to believe it! You have to have faith.” If it worked, we told her, we might. But we knew it wouldn’t work, and she was too busy with other tables for us to explain that no one should believe in The Salad.
My water broke the next afternoon, six hours before my scheduled c-section.
Okay, no, I didn’t give up my skeptic outlook and become a salad follower. I just thought the whole thing was kind of funny. But my success with the salad inspired a friend of mine, who was six weeks behind me in her pregnancy. She ate The Salad several times after her 39th week, hoping to bring on an early birth. Nothing happened at all, except that she had a delicious and healthy lunch. She finally was induced into labor about a week after her due date.
Los Angeles is a huge place, and I like that there’s a quaint local custom like this nearby. It makes life a little more fun. It gives pregnant women something to talk about. It alarms me just a little that The Salad is part of a larger issue I have with the world—that people believe silly things. But at least it tastes good.
Tanya Said,
October 15, 2008 @ 9:09 am
You could, of course, concoct a salad that would bring about labor – but the fact that one would have to include natural abortifacients to acheive the desired affect would no doubt bring about a number of lawsuits and an entirely different (and likely negative) reputation to the establishment.
Sad thing is, there are safe ways to induce labor in most women that don’t require paying for a salad you may not actually want to eat.
The Salad: A Tasty Logical Fallacy « Skepfeeds-The Best Skeptic blogs of the day Said,
October 15, 2008 @ 9:11 am
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Jodi Said,
October 16, 2008 @ 11:47 am
This post made me laugh! My mom swears by a greasy pizza to induce labor. Gotta love those urban legends!
Kelly Said,
October 24, 2008 @ 6:39 am
Maybe your friend should have eaten Thai food!
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November 26, 2008 @ 5:34 pm
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