Should We Really Wait To Swim After Eating?
How much truth is behind the popular “wait 30 minutes after eating” advice
As a child, I spent much of my Minnesota summers (and they did exist, a few blessed months when the state was hot and muggy instead of buried under multiple feet of snow!) hanging out at the community pool.
We belonged to the local YMCA, which had a big pool, with every feature a child could imagine. At one end, the ground gently sloped in, as if walking down a beach into the water. The other end featured a big, covered slide, with twists and turns that deposited shrieking children into the deep end of the pool with loud splashes.
And perhaps best of all, convenient for the parents, a small shack next to the pool served up french fries, hot dogs, and other greasy and unhealthy summer fare.
We’d beg our parents for a few dollars to go get a big basket of fries, the grease burning our fingers as we greedily wolfed them down. The parents would converse, glad to have the kids no longer underfoot — but they’d shout warnings at us.
“Be sure not to go into the pool after you’ve eaten! You need to wait a half hour, so you don’t get a cramp!”
The cramps. The 30 minute timer after eating, keeping us out of the pool… did it apply from when we started eating, or when we finished…
