7 Reasons No One Should Ever Eat Pumpkin Pie

Everyone’s all in a fever right now about pumpkin—thinking about Thanksgiving desserts, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte, the launch of 1 million new pumpkin-flavored things. Thanksgiving is, perhaps, the greatest American holiday. It’s our chance to do what we do best: Eat. All. Day.

If you think about it, the meal itself is a little weird. On no other day do we eat turkey (which always turns out dry and is therefore yucky), cranberry sauce, stuffing (the best part of the meal by far), and sweet potatoes that aren’t fries. It’s sort of an un-American celebration of America. (We should really be eating burgers, fries, and milkshakes, but whatever.) It rocks because nothing happens except eating: no presents, no religious service, no action except using the TV remote and the oven.

So why do we end this day of hedonistic and delicious eating with a dessert made out of a vegetable? Pumpkin SUCKS in desserts (pumpkin sucks in everything, really, but that’s another story). You know what’s good in dessert? Chocolate. So herewith, let me present you with seven important truths about pumpkin pie and why we’re letting ourselves down—letting America down, dammit—by allowing it to be the icing on the cake of the perfect Thanksgiving meal.

Pumpkin is a Vegetable.

No one ever thought, how awesome would an asparagus pie be? String bean pie? Not even a squash pie sounds good. The closest we get is a rhubarb pie, but you know what makes that tolerable? The inclusion of strawberries. Strawberries are there so you forget it has a vegetable in it.

Pumpkin Pie Filling Always Ruins The Crust.

The crust is good. But you have to scrape all the vegetable off to enjoy it.

It Reeks of a Yankee Candle.

The spices in a pumpkin pie take me back to ’80s cologne and the Yankee Candle factory. Yes, I know the candles came after the pie, but somehow the pumpkin spice thing in car air fresheners and candles and everything else has made me associate the pie with completely artificial, chemical scents. Now when that pumpkin pie comes out of the oven, I feel like I’m stuck in a windows-closed classroom with a guy drenched in Drakar Noir in 1986. Or at my grandmother’s house in Florida with a Glade PlugIn air freshener in every room. Or…you get it, don’t you?

We Already Have Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows.

The fact that this is called a “vegetable” at Thanksgiving is SUCH a win. I tend to scavenge out all the marshmallows, Phish-food style, but ultimately I do get a little vegetable as part of the mix—and then my parents are proud of me for eating a vegetable. (All veggie sides should have marshmallows on them.) But moreover, THIS is where pumpkin pie belongs—in the quiche/veggie side category, where you get credit for eating a vegetable when you’re really eating bacon (quiche) and marshmallows (sweet potatoes). PS: My mother-in-law, who is a huge health nut, makes a sick sweet potatoes and marshmallows side. And I love her for it because I know if she could live her best life, she’d eat marshmallows all day—and that, if nothing else, is what Thanksgiving gives us: the chance to break the rules.

We Are At Max Pumpkin Capacity.

Pumpkin is everywhere. Because of loyalty to the Thanksgiving holidays—or maybe just because pumpkins are cute and round and picking them is fun—our obsession has spawned an army of pumpkin-themed things. So not only do I have to contend with this completely ridiculous dessert at Thanksgiving, but now I can’t avoid it elsewhere. Maybe if there were more chocolate-and-pumpkin combo desserts, I’d be more on board with this flavor takeover.

The Only Good Thing About Pumpkin Pie is the Whipped Cream.

But, honestly, that’s the only good thing in almost every pie. I would eat my flip-flop if it had whipped cream on it.

Pumpkin Pie Would Be Better If It Was Made Out of Chocolate.

Chocolate is the perfect dessert ingredient—and might actually make pumpkin tolerable. The fact that there aren’t more chocolate pies is absurd. Even most pecan pies don’t have chocolate. And don’t get me started on key lime pie. Limes are the LEAST popular of the citrus fruits—only tolerable in a gin and tonic and on Thai food—so why is there a pie made of them? Whoever is in charge of pie recipes got it all wrong. All pies should be like this black-bottom chocolate cream pie. Even the crust is chocolate on this one. Finally, a dessert worthy of Thanksgiving.

Disagree with me? You should really be spending your time here.

Kate Lewis got her start as a celebrity publicist in Los Angeles, then pivoted to writing. She is now an essayist and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is working on a memoir.