5 Food Pairing That’s Actually Bad For Your Diet!

These food pairings are delicious classics but turns out might not be good for your diet or health. Find out which food combination you should avoid!

For people who eat without even thinking, they would just munch down on anything that taste or smell good. But we have to be more mindful of what food pairing that taste divine but actually may have a bad impact on you and should be avoided like the plague!

White Bread and Strawberry Jam

This is a breakfast favorite for most households. It’s so easy to prepare. It doesn’t even take you more than 5 minutes, et voilà! You have a satisfied tummy just like that. But did you know that according to a dietician Allison Stowell, starting your day with a meal low in protein and fat and high in simple carbohydrate like in white bread and strawberry jam will get you hungry throughout the day and make you prone to overeating? This doesn’t mean you can’t have toast fro breakfast though. Just swap white bread with whole wheat bread that’s high in fiber and the strawberry jam with organic peanut butter high in protein and good fat. This will give you higher satiety level for longer period of time!

Meat Galore Pizza

Devouring greasy, cheese-laden pizza topped with all kinds of meat is heaven for most people. A slice is never enough; without you realizing it you might just even finish the whole pan while watching movies on your laptop. This doesn’t exactly take a scientist to crack but pizza with meat toppings is not good for you. Pizza on its own is already bad: high calorie, chock full of the bad kind of fat, and high in sodium. Adding processed meat that’s high in sodium and fat to the former is just like pouring gasoline on to the fire. This food combination will up your risk in getting cardiovascular diseases. If you must eat pizza, choose wiser! Get the vegetable or mushroom toppings to increase the nutrition value in the meal or get a side salad to go with it.

Salad with Low-Fat or Fat-Free dressing

You might be wondering how salad with low-fat or fat-free dressing can be on the list of food that might not be healthy for you? Vegetables in salad are nutritious, high in vitamin and fiber. Pairing that with dressings that’s low in fat or contain no fat at all seems like the logical choice, right? Wrong! According to a Food Science professor from Purdue, Mario Ferruzzi, in order to maximize the nutritional benefit of vegetables and fruits we have to use fat-based dressing. Fat ease the absorption of all the good nutrients in the salad in our bodies.

Muffin and Orange Juice

This is another breakfast classic, but turns out it contains a lot of calories but very little nutrition! Both muffin and orange juice are high in simple carbohydrate and contain very little fiber, protein, and fat. “Lack of protein in your diet and consumption of excess carbohydrate will spike the blood sugar level in your body, which will make you feel lethargic,” said Jennifer Christman, a dietician from Medifast, Inc. It’s a wiser to choice to opt for a whole-wheat muffin and a cup of low fat milk. You can add fresh fruits to the meal for some vitamins as well!

Burger and French Fries

Who doesn’t love burger and French fries: the epitome of fast food. But do you know the long-term effect of the consuming burger and French fries? A medical director in Amari Medical, New York, Dr. J. Shah, explains that the meat patties in burgers contains a lot of preservative and fat that’s rendered for too long. Combined with the sugar in French fries, it will trigger the production and then immediate elimination of cytokines. Cytokines are proteins important in cell signaling. Released by cells and affect the behavior of other cells. Its function mostly is to reduce or increase the immune system and body’s response to damage tissues. So you can imagine if our body’s level of cytokines is low and how it will affect your body in the long-term! Scary, right? 

Originally published on Fimela.com. Translated and edited by Gold's Gym Indonesia.