By Ilan Brat
It used to be easy for people like Kristen D'Amico, who can't
stand the taste of pumpkin pie. She merely had to say no to a slice
of it on Thanksgiving Day.
Not anymore.
A rising tide of products flavored with pumpkin pie spice has
flooded grocery store shelves and restaurant menus, and not just
near her home in Deltona, Fla. Friends tease the 34-year-old
stay-at-home mother with gleeful photos and text messages about
pumpkin lattes, coffee creamers and pies. Relatives mock her, she
says, at Thanksgiving dinner for shunning pumpkin in all its
forms.
The pumpkin craze "really is an epidemic," she says, adding that
she must have missed the indoctrination session where people "were
brainwashed, and I'm like, 'What's wrong with these people?' "
Pumpkin pie spice--a blend of sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg and
allspice--evokes the taste and smell of pumpkin pie. And it is
being used in everything from English muffins to dog food, beer and
cornbread. "Smells like heaven, right?" says Meghan McAndrews of
General Mills, promoting the Betty Crocker recipe.
The ragged band of people immune to the charms of pumpkin pie
spice feel increasingly misunderstood and shunned despite their
best efforts to thwart its highly commercialized advance. Haters
have organized anti-pumpkin days and railed against the ubiquitous
flavor in raps and online diatribes. Still, the onslaught continues
with pumpkin-spice hummus and Country Crock Pumpkin Spice spread.
Beeradvocate.com lists 100 top-rated pumpkin beers. There is a
pumpkin spice shade of nail polish and a pumpkin spice whey-protein
flavor.
It's all too much for Jesse McDonald, a 35-year-old indie
rapper, who remembers in his childhood in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
touching the slimy, stringy guts of a pumpkin while carving his
first jack-o'-lantern. Ever since, he has had an aversion to the
feel, smell and taste of pumpkin.
Two years ago, Mr. McDonald, whose stage name is Jesse
Dangerously, returned home from a U.S. tour and put out a song
titled "Pumpkin Spice Swag," envisioning a pumpkin-spice
Armageddon, where the world is overrun with pumpkin-spice police
and pumpkin-spice iPhones.
But fans mistook his complaints for an ode. One baked him a
pumpkin-spice birthday cake and another sent him a
pumpkin-spice-scented hat, which he says took six months to air
out.
Ms. D'Amico, who with a friend runs a YouTube channel called
PlanetMommyhood, has tired of the horrified looks she provokes by
mentioning how much she hates pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice.
She recently posted on the site's Facebook page something about
pumpkin spice engulfing her food and beverage options--and got
harsh reactions from dozens of friends and followers.
"I didn't say that your baby is ugly. I said that pumpkin spice
is gross. Calm down!" she says. "I'm praying; this is a nightly
prayer, that it goes away."
Len Gigante, a retired hostage negotiator, tried to launch a
National Anti-Pumpkin Day three years ago, but says he got nowhere.
He thinks it might be a losing battle.
Some blame Starbucks Corp. for turning the seasonal
pumpkin-spice trend into a mass-market mammoth with the 2003
introduction of its pumpkin-spice latte. Pumpkin-flavored offerings
in 2013 drew retail sales of nearly $350 million, up 14% from the
previous year, according to Nielsen, the market-research firm.
Pumpkin growers, meanwhile, have seen increased demand boost the
average price of whole pumpkins by 33% to $13.30 per hundred pounds
since 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
When Nashville author Jon Acuff recently spotted a bag of
pumpkin-pie spice flavored pumpkin seeds, he said he knew the trend
had gone too far. Its sickening pervasiveness threatens to spoil
his pumpkin-inspired fondness for the cheerful autumn days of his
childhood in Massachusetts, he says. "We're flying too close to the
sun on wings made of pumpkin spice."
But there is no unanimity about pumpkin pie. For one thing,
pumpkins are a squash. And some recipes suggest making "pumpkin
pie" with butternut squash. A pumpkin soup tastes nothing like a
pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie spice is a smell as well as a taste. The
smell and taste bother people, and some people just don't like
pumpkin itself. John Oliver, on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight"
unleashed a three-minute attack on the flavor. He said, "I,
personally, for instance, would rather drink a
cable-knit-sweater-spice latte."
In early November, after a cold front moved into the Northeast,
Katie Pyle stopped into a Starbucks in Hoboken, N.J., for her first
pumpkin-spice latte of the year. Then she dashed off a message to
her Facebook followers, condemning "the haters. I just had my first
pumpkin spice latte of the season and it was FRICKIN'
DELICIOUS."
The post became one of her most popular ever among her small
group of followers, generating 45 likes and several laudatory
comments.
"It's a cold-winter drink, and I feel like it's something that I
use to get myself through the miserable, cold weather," she
says.
Nielsen Senior Vice President of Consumer Insights Andrea Riberi
says pumpkin could soon have competition as the number of
cranberry-flavored products multiply. And that leaves a sour taste
in many mouths, too.
But Americans' emotional ties to pumpkins will linger, says
Cindy Ott, a professor at Saint Louis University who in 2012
published the book, "Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American
Icon."
Pumpkins, treasured for their abundant production by the
American colonists and later used as a last-resort animal feed by
farmers in the late 1800s, rekindle Americans' reverence for the
small family farm, she says.
"The pumpkin's been around a long time, so it's not like it's
going to go anywhere," she says.
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