I enjoy the funny emails forwarded to me, and a good number of them espouse conservative opinions with which I don't necessarily agree, but that's okay.

Once in awhile I receive one of those urban legend/internet rumor emails, and coincidentally it'll always be from one of my conservative Republican friends.

Today's was about onions, the story being that if you put a cut onion in a sick room it will attract the germs to it and away from the patient. Supposedly you can put cut onions around your home and office and you won't get the flu because the onions attract all the germs.

Because of this germ attraction, according to the email, you should never eat left-over onions, and it went into great detail about how you once you cut an onion you need to use it all right away and throw away the rest; not even storing it in the refrigerator will save you, even if you use it the next day.

And of course this kind of email has all kinds of testimony and expert confirmation of the alleged fact.

So naturally my first inclination is to forward this warning to all my friends.

But wait. First I check it out on Snopes.com:

Snopes

Sure enough, it's not true. Once again, I'm saved from the embarrassment of the Chicken Little Syndrome: THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING! Say what? Oh. NEVER MIND!

In case you've never looked at the website, Snopes debunks these tales, and separates the true elements from the false, because some of them have a dot of truth. What's most interesting to me is how a lot of these rumors are several years old, but they are still circulated today as breaking news.

It's irritating to get these alarmist emails, and especially the ones that say the author has checked this rumor on Snopes and it's all true. But when I go check anyway, sure enough it isn't true, so the email is lies upon lies. It's gotten to where them telling me Snopes says it's true is a red flag that sends me straight to Snopes, or if I'm lazy, I just automatically delete the stupid email without even considering forwarding it.

Aside from the food ones, and the ones about forwarding the email so Microsoft will send me money, and the Nigerian scams, there are the political ones. These are the worst because of the blatant lies and not-so-subtle distortions of the truth about people, such as the ones trying to smear Barack Obama, his family, or someone on his cabinet.

Most of the time I just delete these emails. If I see something in Snopes that makes them sound slightly valid, I might clean them up to weed out the lies and forward them to a few select friends.

But once in awhile I let the person who sent me the email know that they are promulgating lies and they should check these things out.

The other day someone sent me the one about how cake mixes all contain a deadly toxin. It was so irresponsible I told her about it, and she sent out a retraction.

I mean, really, people have got to take some responsibility for the information they spread around, check some facts, not be so gullible, go read a good book.

Are you wondering about the toxic onions? The nugget of truth is that once you cut into an onion you do remove the skin that protects from bacteria. They are fairly acidic, so not too hospitable to germs, but they can spoil and make you sick if not handled properly.

The worst risk of eating contaminated onions is with fast food, such as when fresh chopped onions are put on top of old chopped onions for the hot dogs sold at the ball park, or onions in unrefrigerated potato salad (worse of a risk than the mayonnaise), or chopped green onions that are generally eaten raw and might not have been washed properly. So, be mindful of keeping prepared foods at the proper temperatures.

And no, onions don't prevent the flu or cure pneumonia.