Pickles wrapped in cheese, popcorn with beans and ice cream on meatloaf are just a few of the surprising food combinations Americans said they love, according to this survey. It’s not to say these pairings are must-try, but they definitely show just how unique our taste buds can be.
So when Twitter user Michael Realman called for “canceling each other over food takes today,” it hit a soft spot for many. Immediately, people started sharing their own “cancelable” food combos that hit all too close to home, or rather the kitchen, for the rest.
From ketchup on waffles to Nutella pasta, some of the pairings will definitely raise our brows but hey, who am I to judge when I put salt and pepper on my porridge! And if you too are no stranger to some quirky food combo, be sure to share it in our comment section!

Image credits: trichesfaucons
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Is it just me but it feels like in the last few years the Reeses don't taste as good. Like the chocolate is even of a cheaper quality? Maybe my tastebuds are going...
Load More Replies...Hershey's puts its milk through a process called controlled lipolysis. This breaks down the fatty acids in the milk and produces butyric acid - it can also be found in vomit and is responsible for it’s smell and acidic taste. Originally it was to prevent it from going off during the long shipping across the ocean. Now they only keep doing it because Americans got used to this taste.
I saw a documentary about Milton Hershey that said that he started making chocolate like that mostly by accident. I've read two accounts for why it happened, but the most likely is that he dehydrated some partially curdled milk. I'm not saying you're wrong, just your research rendered different results than mine. The upshot is that you have to eat a lot of Hershey's chocolate before you learn to like it - it is a cultivated taste, like fine wine or bleu cheese. Therefore, I am justified in feeling smugly superior every time I enjoy a Hershey bar!
Load More Replies...I tried some Hershey chocolate and by God I hated it. I don't know if all American chocolate is like that, I've never been there but no. It didn't touch my Cadbury or galaxy and any other chocolate I adore.
Hershey's is not considered good chocolate in the US, either. Definitely bottom tier stuff. We have quite a few good chocolate companies here, like Vosges, Dandelion, Theo, Recchiuti, to name a few off the top of my head. I don't know if they export. My favorite chocolate is from a local shop that does fair trade bean-to-bar chocolate in house. People likely have never heard of them outside my city. There are some larger companies that are better than Hershey but I wouldn't call great like Ghirardelli and Dove. They started as smaller local brands, but Ghirardelli is now owned by Lindt and Dove is owned by Mars. Apparently Dove sells as Galaxy in UK.
Load More Replies...Have to agree with this, friend brought some back from a trip to America and it really was awful.
Oh so not true! There are some small local companies that make amazing chocolate! But keep believing that anyway more for me! : D
Load More Replies...it is terrible, and it's a terrible company. I cried when Hershey's bought Rowntree in Canada. Now all the chocolate in the formerly Rowntree bars tastes like sugared waxy grit.
It tastes like rancid milk to me. Then again, I really dislike milk chocolate. Dark chocolate, and the darker the better, is where it's at.
I wascuripus so I bought kisses, I am in europe, they are not common. Not bad buď Milka chocolate is better
American here...every year, I buy a gigantic 5kg bar of Caillebaut 72% from Belgium. Totally worth it.
Next year add a bar of cote d'or 1883 Milk chocolate. It's the best milk chocolate we have in belgium. That's how kids should eat chocolate
Load More Replies...The bars aren't bad. The Kisses, though... ugh! They always have an aftertaste of bile. >urp!<
Man I am so happy to know I am not alone thinking this same thing about kisses!! Lol just yuck and the after taste just lingers for ever 🤮
Load More Replies...I like all kinds of chocolate, including Hershey's. Hershey's chocolate is so common in the United States that it is often the only chocolate people eat. Dark chocolate is my absolute favorite. Sometimes I'll splurge on really good chocolate and it is amazing. I don't think any chocolate is bad. There are just different levels of good.
Canadian Hershey almond chocolate is good. I'll eat it over Nestle or Cadbury. Especially those nasty Caramilk bars. But nothing compares to Lindt.
Don't settle. The right chocolate will find you if it was meant to be. :)
Load More Replies...I think we all know Reese's are the only exception to this. Honestly I can't even know Reese's was Hershey's for the longest time because I don't prefer Hershey's bars or kisses usually and Reese's are my favorite besides snickers or O'Henrys
As a women I eat it every month (or any chocolate not just hersheys) and it taste ok
That would be because Hershey’s chocolate is only soy with sugar and chocolate flavoring
Agreed- but I'm not American and didn't grow up on the stuff so maybe I'm biased?
Hershey's is my absolute favorite chocolate! Forget Godiva, forget Cadbury's, Hershey's is IT
Hershey's is a scum company. They use foreign exchange students as slave labor and once even tried to convince the FDA to let them use some sort of congealed oil instead of actual cocoa in their "chocolate" bars.
All American chocolate is terrible, as far as I can work out! What do they put in it, apart from 10 tonnes of sugar? There's no cocoa, I'm pretty sure.
I agree. Can't stand the wax-like texture. Luckily they are pretty pricey here too so I can say I will never be tempted to buy one again.
You are right It's an American thing to eat bad chocolate and that's because of how they process it to make it "safe" for consumption FDA... F***ing Dumb Asses
It does not qualify as 'chocolate' in Europe. It is disgusting!
Worst chocolate I have ever tasted. New Zealand's Whittakers chocolate is the best.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG! It's got a flavor no other chocolate company can compare to. It's in its own league!!
I had a Hershey kiss a couple nights ago and it was horrible, tasted like wax. After eating decent expensive chocolate for a while then eating a kiss I find them repulsive.
To me, this statement is a hoity toity "I am better than you!" proclamation. Hershey's is likely THE BEST chocolate many many people have ever tasted. At least the best THEY can afford.
Hersheys went bad because it's made in Mexico now. The only thing Hersheys makes in the USA are the Kisses. Everything else is made in Mexico. It's no longer the Great American Chocolate Bar.........it's the Great Mexican Chocolate Bar.
Most of us have at least one eating habit, if not more, that chances are we developed way back in our childhood. The first year of life is a period of rapid physical, social and emotional growth, during which eating patterns also develop. During this first year, infants transition from consuming a single food (i.e., breast milk or formula) to consuming a variety of foods more characteristic of an adult diet.
Moreover, parents influence children's eating behavior in many ways. First off, adults actively make food choices for the whole family, serving as models for dietary choices and patterns. Children also learn about food by observing the eating behaviors modeled by others. For example, research reveals that children's intake of fruits, vegetables, and milk increased after observing adults consuming the foods.
Our food preferences, whether common or unusual, are also part of our eating habits that formed early in life. They often include unique food combinations, too. The registered nutritionist Charlotte-Stirling Reed, who’s the author of “The Baby & Child Nutritionist,” told Bored Panda that when it comes to weird food pairings, parents often have a preconceived idea of what “flavors” go together. “They find it unimaginable that their young children eat certain pairings. But little ones, especially during weaning, don’t have the idea that breakfast HAS to be sweet, for example, until we introduce that idea,” she said and added that “They might not see the problem of having a courgette porridge in the morning or avocado ice cream!”
This is a pretty common dish (specifically in the UK), so I don't see this one being cancelled.
Both of those ingredients bring my daughters IBS up big time!! Goes from a flat stomach to looking five months pregnant! Hard to cook without them but possible!!
“In fact, my children recently chomped through some fruit sorbet with a stick of cauliflower on the side (their request). Sometimes children just follow their own innate intuition of what foods and flavors they want at that moment,” Reed told us. She said that parents should be happy to see that and “let them go for it!” Moreover, the child nutritionist added that she has carrot, beetroot and courgette porridge options as regular breakfasts for her kids, “and to them that’s quite normal!” If you and your little one feel adventurous enough to try some of the Reed’s unique porridge recipes, check them out right here.
I don't see anything unusual? Not my favorite, but if there was a cookie shortage, I'd at least consider them.
Sensory scientists and flavor experts have been studying just what foods and flavors pair well with others, pleasantly surprising our taste buds. One such pretty widespread combo is pineapple and ham (but beware to never order this kind of pizza anywhere in Italy!), which seem to work perfectly together.
Paul Breslin, a sensory scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and a professor of nutrition at Rutgers University, explained this combo: “Really fatty foods, like ham and other meats, tend to leave your mouth feeling fatty, which is an undesirable state. Enter the pineapple. The fruit, which is naturally acidic, cuts through that greasy mouthfeel, creating a balanced (and tasty) result,” he said.
Pears and blue cheese have a similar effect. Breslin says that dressings typically contain three components: fat, salt, and acid. In the case of this classic pairing, the blue cheese provides the fat and salt, and the pear does its part with the acid.
Meanwhile, Niki Segnit, UK-based author of The Flavour Thesaurus, argues that “there are many wonderful matches to be discovered, and you don't need a PhD in molecular gastronomy to start experimenting.” She told the press that “interesting and unusual flavor matches can be made with common store-cupboard ingredients, like cheese and marmalade, or chocolate and aubergine.”
This 2020 survey commissioned by SPAM found that 41 percent of American respondents were most likely to have discovered their favorite food combinations from family or friends. The most popular food combo Americans love is the dipping of French fries in their chocolate milkshake. Other top combinations were chocolate and popcorn or sour cream and onion chips with chocolate. Interestingly, over half said they’ll have a “freak out” if their different foods touch each other while on their plate, the same survey found.
Hear me out. Vanilla Greek yogurt, a spoonful of fig preserves, a good sprinkle of chopped toasted walnuts.
People put stuff in Starbucks coffee because Starbucks coffee is terrible.
You forgot the fact that they sit on the bottom of the ocean and eat all the fish poop that drifts down, and they are full of poop when people eat them.
OMG! Finally another human being that shared my aversion to Ranch! It's totally gross! My favorite food is bacon cheese fries. I ALWAYS get it without ranch, because ranch is just gross. I usually always get it WITH ranch because some brain surgeon in the kitchen thinks that EVERYBODY likes ranch. 😝
"There are 3 stages in life - I hate olives; I don't despise olives and OMG OLIVES"
this might kill you but, i sometimes eat raw onions as a snack when i’m done grilling burgers, like chips. *powers up defibrillator *
I can't stand BBQ pizza, and also don't much like chicken on pizza, so totally disagree.
I've tried hot sauce on vanilla ice cream. It's an odd combo, but I've done it more than once.
If taste of flavourless grass is someone's thing...not judging but actually judging.
As long as it's medium rare, then I don't care if it looks like it was hit by a 4x4 and the grill left an imprint
This is why you had the witch hunts. To stop this affront to nature ;o)
The state of Texas gets a lot of things wrong, but brisket isn't one of them.
What does that even mean? "Extremely Mid?" I'm from Denver, and I love me some In N Out. They just opened up a store here in town. Now I don't have to drive to Phoenix for my double/double fix!
because you can mash them together and make oatmeal chocolate cookies
McDonald's fries are really good, but the ones at Islands are better.
hey hey what’s that sound, this person will be laying on the ground
I like to peel a banana, butter a slice of bread and roll the banana up in the bread and eat it like a sausage roll. It stems from my love of banana sandwiches and my laziness to slice the banana
it’s good friday and today should be holy, so now *performs exorcism*
1=NO, 2=IDK, 3=pickled beets, yum, 4=Huh?, 5=true dat, 6=you're too picky.
Tomato ruins my braces nothing else. Tomatoes don’t ruin anything else
i ahve never tried this. and tbh, they look like tiny diseased turds
Strawberries dipped in chocolate is delicious. Also banana and Nutella sandwiches are amazing.
WHY are those "fantasy" pizza toppings? Can you not afford them?
I love sushi because of the rice part and the veggie part. Not because of society
no. i don’t agree. noone agrees. i dislike you. you are incorrect
that pizza sounds delicious. thanks for saying this, i’ll try to make one and send the results
My mother forced me as a child to eat watermelon, because she was NOT going to be known as the mother whose child hated watermelon.
Should I tell him that you can also put fruit in savory dishes (like pork with apple)? Or would it kill him?
Ketchup and mayonnaise together is essentially thousand Island dressing, so not weird. But eating it off the spoon is.
therapist: colour or highlite the part that you dislike. me: *colours in the whole damn thing*
no. it should not. please do not. do not listen to the insane man.
let me just say, after looking at some of these, i refused to look at the rest of them, and just came here to say that
What is the purpose of this post? Just don't eat it and stop judging what others do
"Hunger is the best sauce" ---- a proverb for a reason. When you're hungry, you'll eat anything. Been there, tried that.
There are a lot of these where i really wonder if they've ever had a good example of the thing they hate. Like nowadays, especially in Canada and the US, i can easily imagine someone who has never had good bread or a good tomato. It's sad. otoh, if they have and they just don't like them, fair enough
We have amazing breads and tomatoes in the US, lol! I grow heirloom tomatoes every summer and bake breads all throughout the year. Darn, now I'm hungry for warm, fresh bread.
Load More Replies...I like Hershey's chocolate and Goldfish Crackers. Probably the sweet and salty combo.
I thought I was the only one. It's one of the many weird food habits I've passed to my daughter. One of the others is pepperoni, jalapenos, onions, and pineapple on pizza.
Load More Replies...Skin on fries are not fancy. You're just too lazy to peel the f****n spuds!
that sounds like the best way to have rice pudding when you have no rice pudding I have ever heard
Load More Replies...Add another one. I've never even bought it. I tasted it once at my sister's house and thought I was going to die from a sugar overload. I don't understand the appeal.
Load More Replies...I suggest we cancel the cancellers. Why should anyone care what other people like or don't like to eat?
If we cancel the cancellers then aren't we cancellers and should be cancelled?
Load More Replies...With some of these horrible posts.. Do you upvote them (after all, this is a list of food combinations that should be cancelled) or do you downvote them, because they are just terrible?
I think we're upvoting the ones we don't want to cancel
Load More Replies...Cheez-its and black licorice are a snack sensation you gotta try at least once. Tastes like gourmet sausage
I don't get the love for those sickeningly sweet brown sugar and molasses concoctions some people think are BBQ sauce either, but a nice tangy or spicy sauce can compliment just about any meat.
Load More Replies...These folks are amateurs :) When I was 5 or early 6yo and alone at home while my parents were working and sister in school (my parents were quite trusting or that was a different time, I guess), I got hungry and started looking for something to eat. I ended up mixing bread crumbs with some sort of powder for instant vitamin drink and ate it dry. I liked it. Made it again quite a few times, especially while still a kid.
This list made me sad- half the food was things I can no longer eat, the other half food I have never heard of/tried :(
If you're referring to the peanut butter spread they try to pass off as peanut butter then you're right. It might as well be classified as icing. It's like saying miracle whip is the same as mayonnaise. I prefer natural peanut butter like Adam's. It actually tastes like peanuts. If you don't like peanuts then it really doesn't matter which one you try.
Load More Replies...Coffee creamer, straight outta the container. Pure chemicals, almost styrofoam, sure, nummy, yes!
Rice with anything is a crime against humanity. Absolutely revolting stuff.
For the most part, rice is just a filler carb. But, sushi wouldn't really be the same without it.
Load More Replies...let me just say, after looking at some of these, i refused to look at the rest of them, and just came here to say that
What is the purpose of this post? Just don't eat it and stop judging what others do
"Hunger is the best sauce" ---- a proverb for a reason. When you're hungry, you'll eat anything. Been there, tried that.
There are a lot of these where i really wonder if they've ever had a good example of the thing they hate. Like nowadays, especially in Canada and the US, i can easily imagine someone who has never had good bread or a good tomato. It's sad. otoh, if they have and they just don't like them, fair enough
We have amazing breads and tomatoes in the US, lol! I grow heirloom tomatoes every summer and bake breads all throughout the year. Darn, now I'm hungry for warm, fresh bread.
Load More Replies...I like Hershey's chocolate and Goldfish Crackers. Probably the sweet and salty combo.
I thought I was the only one. It's one of the many weird food habits I've passed to my daughter. One of the others is pepperoni, jalapenos, onions, and pineapple on pizza.
Load More Replies...Skin on fries are not fancy. You're just too lazy to peel the f****n spuds!
that sounds like the best way to have rice pudding when you have no rice pudding I have ever heard
Load More Replies...Add another one. I've never even bought it. I tasted it once at my sister's house and thought I was going to die from a sugar overload. I don't understand the appeal.
Load More Replies...I suggest we cancel the cancellers. Why should anyone care what other people like or don't like to eat?
If we cancel the cancellers then aren't we cancellers and should be cancelled?
Load More Replies...With some of these horrible posts.. Do you upvote them (after all, this is a list of food combinations that should be cancelled) or do you downvote them, because they are just terrible?
I think we're upvoting the ones we don't want to cancel
Load More Replies...Cheez-its and black licorice are a snack sensation you gotta try at least once. Tastes like gourmet sausage
I don't get the love for those sickeningly sweet brown sugar and molasses concoctions some people think are BBQ sauce either, but a nice tangy or spicy sauce can compliment just about any meat.
Load More Replies...These folks are amateurs :) When I was 5 or early 6yo and alone at home while my parents were working and sister in school (my parents were quite trusting or that was a different time, I guess), I got hungry and started looking for something to eat. I ended up mixing bread crumbs with some sort of powder for instant vitamin drink and ate it dry. I liked it. Made it again quite a few times, especially while still a kid.
This list made me sad- half the food was things I can no longer eat, the other half food I have never heard of/tried :(
If you're referring to the peanut butter spread they try to pass off as peanut butter then you're right. It might as well be classified as icing. It's like saying miracle whip is the same as mayonnaise. I prefer natural peanut butter like Adam's. It actually tastes like peanuts. If you don't like peanuts then it really doesn't matter which one you try.
Load More Replies...Coffee creamer, straight outta the container. Pure chemicals, almost styrofoam, sure, nummy, yes!
Rice with anything is a crime against humanity. Absolutely revolting stuff.
For the most part, rice is just a filler carb. But, sushi wouldn't really be the same without it.
Load More Replies...
