Pumpkin seasoning is here to stay. It’s time to accept it and move on.

Throw pumpkin spice into a pile of things that were once used as cultural cues but now read as neutral: Denim and tattoos, for example, were once reserved for the counterculture, but are now just as at home in the PTA as they are in demimonde. Punk music now sells minivans.

So it goes with pumpkin spice, which used to be seen as part of a lifestyle choice and is a sign of the most fervent flavor: the women (mostly white, mostly with impeccable hints) who loved breakfast and brunch and your comfy jackets and jackets. Apple orchards and signs painted in their kitchens remind them of a dream. Now pumpkin spice season arrives like no other meteorological phenomenon. It’s here for everyone, like it or not.

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“You’re bound to come across something with pumpkin spice, maybe pancakes or a seasonal drink,” says Melanie Zanoza Bartelme, who tracks food trends at market research firm Mintel. “You can’t avoid it, so there’s no need to be embarrassed about enjoying it. It’s here. It’s all around us.”

Emily Contua, an assistant professor at the University of Tulsa who studies food and media, likened the popularization of flavor to those fluffy shoes that make wearers look like they’re baking potatoes for feet. So trendy in the late ’90s and early ’00s, it was quickly written off by the fashion elite only to be resurrected ironically every now and then. Now, they are just another brand. “It was either, ‘Oh, this is a bubble that’s going to burst,'” she says, “or ‘We’ll never wear them again.'” But then these shoes became a part of our lives.

some Pessimists definitely They still despise those who enthusiastically embrace #pumpkinspiceSZN on Instagram, but combined with the ridicule on social media, there’s another strain of thinking that seems to stem from the near-universal burden of the past few years: Maybe just let it go? If PSL isn’t your thing, just order a plain latte. or not do. Are you.

As a proponent of that stance warned on Twitter on the day the Starbucks Pumpkin-spice latte debuted: “Yeah, listen to me. There’s no slander about pumpkin spice today. Today we’re going to let people enjoy things!!!!

Who cares if someone is excited about a Taylor Swift album or a pumpkin spice latte? Post wrote. “Let the people feel the joy and leave them alone.”

It’s not your imagination: Pumpkin seasoning products really pop up. Its sales accounted for more than $231 million over the past year, according to NielsenIQ data, and it’s nearly 27 percent higher than the previous year. This season, Oreo is offering a limited time pumpkin spice flavor for the first time since 2017.

The flavor is particularly concentrated in the breakfast category, which makes sense given its barista origins. You can find it in cereals (including Special K, Frosted Mini-Wheats, and Cheerios), baked goods (Thomas bagels, English muffins, and Pillsbury Grands), and yogurt (Chobani, Siggi’s, Oui). Coffee whiteners and cold drinks abound. In my recent Washington area shopping trips, I haven’t seen any of the new products that marked the peak of pumpkin spice seasoning. No spam, for example, or potato chips, which I took as evidence of my past flavor journey.

Nobody bases their personality on preferring strawberry ice cream over chocolate, or attributing a personality to whoever does it. So, how did pumpkin spice take its special place in the list of flavors one can enjoy without making a big deal out of it? Let’s go back for a moment to the good old days of 2003, when Starbucks served up seasonal latte mixed with the warm flavors of baking spice.

As its popularity spread on then-nascent social media, “pumpkin seasoning became a staple of the basics,” my colleague Maura Goodkiss noted in 2017. Ultimately, the world’s staple peques embraced it, celebrating it on T-shirts and mugs. with sayings Like “I had pumpkin spice in.”

I have used every pumpkin spice ingredient. Now my armpits smell like nutmeg.

Nearly two decades later, we’re in the fourth wave of pumpkin spice, where one can order a cold pumpkin spice brew without a side of baggage or sarcasm, thanks to these early pioneers of course, but also thanks to the vagaries of human nature and food marketers who understand it. . There seems to be an opportunity for early fall flavor, settled somewhere between the bright fruits of summer and the looming array of holiday flavors, from mint to gingerbread.

Nature – and capitalism – abhor a vacuum. “There was an opportunity,” Barthelemy says. She says having a flavor you gravitate toward when summer is over can be comforting. “It kind of compensates. Warm me up, hold me in your coffee arms and tell me all will be well,” says the pumpkin spice.

Contois offers a more somber interpretation of this seasonal appeal. As climate change results in summers of record temperatures and violent storms, she notes that the notion of fall conjuring up spicy pumpkin flavors is more reassuring than ever. “We have harsh, uncomfortable and dangerous summers, and so we crave cool air and crunchy leaves,” she says. “This yearning is real.”

What’s the most obvious reason you’re obsessed with it? Well, pumpkin spice, with its blend of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice, is actually pretty good in terms of flavour.

In late August, I began skimming grocery shelves, looking for the burnt notes from packets of pumpkin spice. I collected over a dozen items and sampled them over the course of a few days, hoping that the husky spice and warm texture they promised would somehow relive my current reality, where the conditioner isn’t strong enough for soup—moisture, 90+ air around me, and the last word that I used to describe my position is “Activate”.

It turns out that while pumpkin spice is perfectly fine, it doesn’t necessarily elevate any means you’re transporting. I’ve always loved the Mini Wheat Frosted. The seasonal version, although strongly colored with orange frosting, was a nice change. I’m a fan of Greek yogurt, and I enjoyed the nutmeg-prepared version of Chobani. A Thomas English pancake with butter and a cup of Harney & Sons tea–both infused with the subtle sweetness of baking spices–was such a wonderful afternoon snack that I would probably have chosen for a cold afternoon even if I wasn’t up for such an odd job.

Here is our recipe for a pumpkin spice mix that you can make at home

On the other hand, I generally avoid Starbucks coffee and its bitter stings, and it never changes my mind about the spice-filled iterations of pumpkin seeds and cold brew. I even tried throwing in the pumpkin spice creams from Coffee Mate and Starbucks, and they certainly didn’t help. But again, I prefer regular milk in my coffee. Do you like Oreos? So you’ll probably appreciate their autumnal incarnation, whose spicy scent has lingered on my hand long after I polished it.

Finally, my experience didn’t leave me feeling comfortable, it was just cool. Not in terms of heat, of course. While writing this, I’m blow drying my hair in a damp top knot and am considering bringing in a fan from upstairs. But it did give me a lesson: As cute as it is, pumpkin spice can’t hide the true nature of anything. Her spell isn’t even enough to convince me that colder, happier days are still to come. But I’m fine still soaking in the late summer heat and foods like the last of the greasy red tomatoes and Butter Corn And the on the hamburger Meat grill.

And while I taste it, I’ll just enjoy pumpkin spice as a popular monoculture in these trying times. I am not alone in this thought. Recently, Barthelemy spotted a service station near her house offering a “pumpkin spice oil change,” which made her smile. “We’re all in the joke now.”