As you may have noticed, the American food industry has an ongoing plan to put pumpkin or artificial pumpkin-like substances in every food item possible between August and November. However, just because you like pumpkin, that doesn’t mean you should try all of them. Here’s a new cautionary tale: McDonald’s now offers a pumpkin pie, but you shouldn’t eat it.

“If you’re getting one of these looking for a semi-competent pumpkin pie experience,” writes Charles Lam of OC Weekly, “you’re going to be disappointed.” Yes, it’s just McDonald’s pie crust wrapped around some pumpkin-like mush. Lam, who actually likes McDonald’s apple pies, doesn’t think that the whole dessert holds up. The filling is a blandly sweet mush, and the whole thing tastes faintly of cinnamon. It’s like the disastrous pumpkin spice M&Ms. Only you don’t expect something with most of the components of an actual pie (flour, shortening, some actual pumpkin) to just taste vaguely sweet and cinnamony.

In one way, this pie is superior to the drink that began this mania, Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte. It contains some actual pumpkin. Not all that much, since in the list of ingredients it falls after vegetable shortening but before high fructose corn syrup.

We Eat It So You Don’t Have To: McDonald’s Pumpkin Pie [OC Weekly]

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