In a beautifully unhinged 2016 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Diane Keaton delivered a passionate monologue about chewing ice. Liquor store ice is the best, she explained, because they freeze the water while it’s still hot, creating optimal crunch. As she fished an ice cube from her glass of white wine, Keaton recalled, “My dentist said never to [chew ice], because your teeth will break. Well, look,” she smiles, gleefully chomping down on the cube.

DeGeneres’ line of questioning soon became conspiratorial, though. “They say that when you chew ice, it means you’re sexually frustrated,” she told Keaton.

Keaton took a sip of red wine and paused, before replying, “I am sexually frustrated.”

“It’s a rumor,” laughed DeGeneres, “but it’s a true one!”

Sadly, TV interviews with tipsy Hollywood stars don’t constitute actual scientific evidence. In reality, chewing ice doesn’t mean someone is sexually frustrated; if anything, it might mean they’re anemic.

So where did this rumor come from?

Myths like these usually have some kind of online trail, but the origin story of the chewing ice rumor is near impossible to pin down. In 2008, Glamour published a newsletter debunking the myth, and it takes a dark turn pretty quickly. According to their quoted expert, Mayo Clinic hematologist Ruben Mesa, people who chew ice are “more likely to have emotional problems, high levels of stress, even obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Of course, you’d have to be burning through a freezer’s worth of ice per week to warrant this level of concern. Plus, there are plausible explanations for the theory: Maybe your sexual frustration is making you irritable and the cold crunch of an ice cube gives you something to focus on; maybe it’s a day so hot and dry that the trickle of a melting ice in your mouth is so satisfying it creates a tingle of pleasure. More likely, the whole thing is some bizarre playground rumor that’s managed to get word-of-mouth traction, a wink-wink-nudge-nudge stereotype with surprising staying power.

This much is true: Chewing ice is a habit common enough to warrant a medical term — pagophagia, which is rooted in the Greek words pagos, meaning “frost” or “ice,” and phagein, meaning to “eat.” The habit can also be symptomatic of the broader condition pica — the Latin word for “magpie,” a nod to their reputation as indiscriminately hungry scavengers — but this term refers more broadly to compulsive eating of stuff you probably shouldn’t put in your mouth, like grass and clay.

There are a handful of studies on pagophagia specifically, and in addition to being a potential indicator of iron deficiency, ice is also a pretty common pregnancy craving, due to the wild demands that being pregnant puts on your body. But there’s no logical link between pregnancy, anemia and sexual frustration, so the “chewing ice means you’re horny” myth is bizarrely senseless.

If anything, it mostly means you should immediately check your iron levels.