Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

 

Cooking for my boyfriend is a nightmare. Every time he comes over for dinner, I have to be so specific with the food that I serve. It is not that he won't eat one type of food over another, but that he won't eat a combination of certain foods when put together.

He won't have orange juice and shrimp together because he thinks he'll get poisoned; he won't eat eggs and chicken together because they make him nauseous; and he won't eat persimmon and crabs together because apparently when combined they have the potential to kill.

At first, I thought he had a medical condition that prevented him from eating certain food combinations. But then one morning I made him fried eggs and soy bean milk for breakfast. After eyeing the food suspiciously, he pulled out a booklet and pointed to some index on a page. There in bold letters it read, "Eggs and soy bean milk - cause of diarrhea." As I read more I saw that spinach and tofu, milk and orange, and even tomato and watermelon could all be "causes" of diarrhea.

I didn't believe any of it. So one day, when cooking spinach soup, I secretly added in some tofu and served it to him unbeknownst. That night and the days that followed, I observed him and found nothing wrong.

As I suspected, it was all in his head.

My boyfriend is only one of many people in China who checks a long list of foods that might "conflict" with each other before picking up his chopsticks. According to ancient medicine, certain types  of food would have a negative effect on you when eaten together because their chemicals conflict with one another, yet those beliefs are long outdated.

The list goes on. There are certain foods that you might never eat together, like peanuts and pork, pumpkin and fish, but some foods on the list are common diets, such as chocolate and milk, spinach and tofu, chicken and garlic.

The mentality of "you never know what's going to happen" keeps these rumors alive and popular, and the list varies from one source to another.

Once I went on a trip to Thailand and a friend of mine wouldn't eat chicken curry, because according to her book, the combination makes your skin freckle. So I asked her, "How come Thai people eat this diet regularly but they are not overrun with freckles?"

Such belief is not scientific, of course. I've talked with nutritionists who say some of the combinations on the list are foods that might make you sick if consumed in large quantities, but it has nothing to do with the combination itself.

People who fall victim to these lists are missing so much because they limit themselves. If they even had a little bit of knowledge of nutrition, they would know that these lists are not true, yet they stay alert at every meal in fear of an illness that is already in their heads.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.