Dietitian Desiree van de Cork explains.
You can often see fat in a sandwich with melted cheese. This also raises the question: Is melted cheese any more unhealthy than a regular cold hard slice? to me ad Guido Camps, a nutrition researcher at Wageningen University, explains that cheese is actually quite high in calories by itself, both melted and hard. When cheese is heated, neither the molecules nor the calories change. Dietitian Desiré van der Kruk explains that the nutritional value of melted cheese is no different from that of regular cheese. “A lot of my customers often think that a sandwich is more unhealthy than a regular sandwich, but if you only use the same cheese and the same bread and don’t spread any butter on it, nothing will change.”
A side note offered by Desiré is that fatty cheese is the easiest to melt. “Full-fat cheese, for example, melts easier than 20+ cheese.” Whether you eat the cheese warm or cold, it makes no difference how healthy or unhealthy you are, but the type of cheese you choose.
“When cheese is heated, droplets of fat appear on the surface, which makes it appear fatter. This fat is also present in cheese when it is cold,” explains Desiree. “It really depends on the perception of the food, if something looks a little greasy, we think something is unhealthy. We also experience it differently when something is warm or creamy.” This applies not only to melted or hard cheese, but coffee, for example, also has a completely different taste when it is hot or cold. to me ad Camps explains that, for example, we can experience chocolate very differently when it’s soft and melted than when it’s hard and dry. Melted looks fatter and tougher than a solid chocolate bar, while the calories don’t change.
“Another example is the egg. It doesn’t differ in nutritional value if you cook it hard or soft, but people experience it differently. With a boiled egg, the yolk still tastes creamy, which makes it look different than when the yolk is hard.” Exactly,” says Desiree.
Read also: How healthy is it to eat the same thing every day for breakfast or lunch?
Since something is warm, the taste and aroma can also be more intense, according to Camps, so you eat slowly and consciously. This makes you feel full faster, which makes you look like melted cheese or chocolate much stronger, for example. So, even if you prefer a cold cheeseburger, now it’s a good idea to eat slowly and with care, so you feel full for longer.
source | ad, Desiré van der Kurk
picture | Getty Images
