Boston Creme Donut Pop Tart
 



Of the 120-odd species of Pop Tarts, only a few are winners. The Boston Creme Donut Pop Tart is not one of them.

The BCDPT is not for the sensitive palate. If you blush at the prospect of taking a second Oreo, turn back now. This isn’t for you. If sugar is a drug, a BCDPT is the bootleg version, cut with artificial additives, an unpleasant high in a suspect container. 

The box makes no promises. Above, a picture of an explanatory donut unhelpfully oozes its innards out onto the title banner. Below it lies the tart. Even under a macro lens, the photo gives you nothing to hope for. There is hardly any texture or detail, none of the speckles or drizzles that typically adorn a Pop Tart. You couldn’t pick a BCDPT out of a lineup, even if it just stole your lunch money. 

The square box holds the traditional four foil wraps, along with room for a fifth that is never packed. As always, the tarts are hermetically sealed in pairs, a serving size suggestion best ignored. The second tart never hits like the first, and always takes a greater toll.

I open a pack. Sniff. Mistake. 

The scent is heady and overwhelming. My throat constricts, and my head whips back, involuntary responses to foreign chemicals. I choke and submit to the relentless cloying falsity of its corn syrup-laden artifice. I should peel the entire wrapper and walk away for a bit, let it decant, but if I leave now I might never return. Instead I forge ahead, focused on the grim task at hand, my nostrils full as I confront the tart.

It is already broken. The sides are stripped, the corners crumbled. Despite the wreckage, I find the view comforting. The frosting is a familiar chocolate-shell brown, and the innards are a nondescript lining rather than nuclear yellow ooze pictured on the front. 

A tentative bite unleashes artificial compounds, the same mockery of vanilla that assaulted my nose, now insistent on dominating my palate. I am helpless to resist.

The chocolate shell makes me feel bad. Not physically bad, but emotionally bad. I feel my inner child cringe, crying in public school and failing to hide it. The texture is satisfying, the crackly shell and floury pastry snapping and thickening in my saliva. But every chew releases more of the harsh powder that permeates and irritates my soft tissues, deep neurons blaring an alarm from every corner of my mouth. 

At least it is a good source of B vitamins.

The BCDPT is an intruder, a hyperpalatable social parasite that hijacks my survival instincts and punishes me for my gullibility. It is a pale and fat bully perpetuating the cycle of violence that birthed it. My stupid, post-pubescent mouth is its demolition derby. Careening chemicals rob my tongue of previously unknown forms of innocence, wreck memories formerly treasured, and instill a brand-new fear of donut shops.

I let my swollen gums simmer. I have mindlessly plowed through one tart, and I will not chance another. Thin pastry mud coats my teeth and palate. Waves of saliva, all unbidden, wash my tongue and compel me to swallow. I can’t stop rubbing my face. My throat is hot. My teeth seem to loosen in their sockets. I can feel the grit of BCDPT lodged deep in the crevices, clinging to my canines, slowly dissolving my enamel. It is too deep and too tenacious for my probing tongue to dislodge. It may be with me still.

Public school has failed us. Boston Creme Donut Pop Tarts are the case against America, and we are guilty. 



   


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