Pumpkin spice poisons classic fall foods

Pumpkin spice poisons classic fall foods

It started at Starbucks. Slowly, it filtered through essentially every other major coffee chain, poisoning otherwise perfectly good coffee with its cloyingly seasonal flavor. It made it to the major supermarkets, infecting muffins, cupcakes, cookies and baked goods of the like.

But when it hit Oreos, I knew we had let it go too far.

Pumpkin spice has become a travesty, a crime so ingrained in our culture that it has infiltrated even the simplest of basic household essentials.

Thomas Breads has begun making pumpkin spice bagels and English muffins, Hershey has given us pumpkin spice Hershey’s Kisses, there are pumpkin spice marshmallows from Kraft, pumpkin spice Pringles and even pumpkin spice butter produced by Country Crock.

I’m just out here trying to enjoy fall – trying to enjoy the dawn of sweater weather, the era of apple picking, the season for sports I know absolutely nothing about, but suddenly I’m positively surrounded by companies broadcasting their new freakishly flavored foods and beverages.

Even Buzzfeed, today’s most valued and respected news source, wrote an article about the products that might exist in a future pumpkin-spice-dominated world: toothpaste, Doritos, Gatorade, Pepto-Bismol. The scary part? These don’t seem too impossible for a future dominated by a generation who treats a PSL (pumpkin spice latte) like mother’s milk.

We aren’t even sure what pumpkin spice really is. Sure, it’s some artificially manufactured flavor that might involve something resembling pumpkin, but what is this vague spice that we have tossed in for good measure? Cumin? Cayenne peppers? Who knows, really?

All I know is that the harshly artificial, mildly confusing and vaguely overwhelming flavor that corporate America has labeled as “pumpkin spice” is shockingly not something I’m a huge fan of.

So, dear reader, I ask you to join me. Join me in a noble battle, the fight of a generation, the war for our future. Join me in opposing pumpkin spice.