Feeding Frenzy

A food-innovation invasion

Civilization was built on innovation. Industrious people using intellect and imagination to create something that didn’t exist before; something that ultimately became indispensable. The printing press. The cotton gin. The George Foreman Grill.

The main driver of innovation used to be need. Copying Bibles by hand took a long time, and there were lots of godless heathens to convert. I’d expound more on the cotton gin but I was never taught exactly what it does, just that it was invented by Eli Whitney, who I suspect also invented PR.

That kind of ingenuity and hard work is still going strong, providing us with inventions that better society and make our lives easier and sometimes even longer.

That’s not to say that innovation always does those things. Sometimes, it does just the opposite, mostly in service of greed, attaining power, or compensating for pitiful penises.

Very often, innovation is simply driven by brands trying to stay relevant, and therefore profitable, by convincing us we want something we never even thought of.

One category that outpaces most others in terms of innovation is food. In fact, food companies are binging on it.

Ten Hut!

You know what a pizza is. Imagine having to continually rethink what a pizza could be.

This is the plight of Pizza Hut’s research and development team.

Two or three times a year, the Hut rolls out the latest way they’ve dreamed up to combine the holy triad—dough, sauce, and cheese—into a fresh and exciting culinary creation.

And you thought your job was stressful. Think of these poor Hutters, caught in a never-ending loop of reinventing the wheel.

Here are some of their more notable works through the years, from the playing-it-safes to the dare-to-be-greats.

Pan Pizza: Speaks for itself.

Thin ’n Crispy: Also speaks for itself, only more quietly.

Stuffed Crust: Akin to the splitting of the atom, this breakthrough—cheese snaking through the crust’s circumference—was a monumental achievement and ushered in a new era of pizzabilities.

The Triple Deckeroni: Take a thin-crust pizza with pepperoni. Now take another thin-crust pizza with your toppings of choice. Now put that pizza on top of the first one. By my reckoning, that’s only a Double Deckeroni, but I can’t pretend to understand the complex physics involved here.

The Edge: While the crust in most pizzas serves as a sort of parking block that lets you know where to stop putting the ingredients, this pizza says fuck that and drives its toppings all the way to the border.

Dippin' Strips: Slices are great, but have you considered having your pizza cut into thin strips? That you can dip in a variety of sauces? No? Okay.

The Insider: Sure, this has a ring of cheese threading through the crust’s innards. But it also has six kinds of cheese and no sauce. Don’t worry, that’s just your base; there’s a whole other regular pizza that goes on top of it.

The Bigfoot: A two-foot square pizza. Nothing says mouth-watering goodness quite like a hair-covered man-beast.

The Sicilian Lasagna Pizza: I can’t.

Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza: Picture a stuffed crust pizza. Now picture it with a series of evenly spaced hot dog tumors erupting from that crust. Even Joey Chestnut wouldn’t go near this abomination.

So, what’s up with this maniacal menu? Pizza Hut is afraid that if they don’t stay interesting and top-of-mind, you’ll forget about them and just call Anthony’s down the street instead.

The best way to prevent that is through innovation. Maybe you’ve tried The Edge, but what about The El Capitan, delivered to you in two 20-foot shipping containers fused together with 12 kinds of cheese?

Pizza Hut isn’t alone. McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s—all chains do it.

But it’s not just restaurants. Any company that wants you to put their food in your mouth is always busy creating variations of its successful products. And it’s turning out to be more than we can chew.

Food for thought

The food you see in the grocery store has to go through a big hurdle before it gets on those shelves.

Manufacturers must first get these retailers to stock their products. One of the most successful ways to convince them and win precious shelf space is through innovation.

That can come in many forms, such as:

• New flavor (Peanut Butter & Jelly M&M’s)

• New format (Minis, Bites)

• New pack type (Family Size)

• Partnerships (Thomas’ Bagels collaborating with Philadelphia Cream Cheese)

• Digital extensions (“Scan here for recipes”)

The more companies tinker with their proven products, the more likely these variants will attract new consumers and entice existing ones to purchase even more. That’s what makes stocking these products attractive to retailers.

But as I touched on in Why Must Everything Be So Difficult?, there comes a point where it’s just a bit much.

That’s the way the cookie proliferates

Companies have always fiddled with their products. But based on very little research and no desire to do more, I’m going to peg 1974 as the year this phenomenon really took off.

By that point, Oreo had been around for over 60 years, and was happy enough just encouraging people to dunk their cookies in milk. Then, some renegade at Nabisco had the idea to go heavy on the creamy filling and light on the “f’s,” and the Double Stuf Oreo was born.

Since the Double Stuf, there’s been an onslaught of Oreo formats and flavors flying at us, including:

Big Stuf Oreo

Golden Oreo

Oreo Mini

Oreo Cakesters

Golden Double Stuf Oreo

Mega Stuf Oreo

Oreo Thins

Chocolate Oreo

Mint Oreo

That’s just a small taste of what they’ve been up to.

Since 2012 the brand has released nearly 50 limited edition flavors in the U.S. alone, including partnerships with brands like Google and clothing company Supreme. They even teamed up with Lady Gaga, which I assume resulted in Oreos that some people loved and some found a little extra.

M&M’s is also very good at this kind of thing, regularly introducing new limited edition flavors.

Coke and Pepsi also routinely crank out new flavors, from cherry to coffee to vanilla to mango. Pepsi has a version that’s infused with nitrogen, for some reason. And, in a program they call Coca-Cola Besties, Coke Zero Sugar is currently partnering with Oreo, with each brand issuing a version that tastes like the other one. That sounds revolting, and I can’t wait to try them.

Cheez-It—nature’s most perfect food—hasn’t left well enough alone either. They now have a variety that’s made with Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing. That’s just a terrible Mad Lib come to life.

A couple of years ago, Clif Bar (another brand short on “f’s”) partnered with Petco to introduce plant-based jerky treats for dogs. No word on whether bitches be gettin’ their own Luna versions.

In other carbonation news, prebiotic soda brand Poppi partnered with Post Malone this fall to give him his own flavor exclusively at Kroger. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably a heady mix of tattoo ink and beard oil.

Something to chew on

After Christmas, pay attention to how many brands bend over backwards to get invited to your Super Bowl party.

You’ll see football-shaped cookies and crackers. You’ll see new “Party Packs” and “Tailgating Size” formats. You’ll see packages denoting official NFL sponsorships. You’ll see beer cans with team logos. You’ll see, I don’t know, hash mark hash browns, probably.

This is all innovation, and there’s nothing wrong with any of it. Often, it’s a lot of fun.

I’m just asking, can we maybe pump the brakes a bit?

Like, hey Oreo: Double Stuf, Big Stuf, and Mega Stuf? Have we reached the cream-to-cookie structural integrity limit yet, or should I clean out the pantry to make room for Gargantuan Stuf?

Cheez-It: I see you now have a smoked gouda flavor. I’m afraid it’s time for some tough love. No matter how you dress them up, no one is going to put Cheez-Its on their charcuterie board. Your little squares are for kids’ lunch bags and HGTV marathons. Deep down you know that, right? Keep it simple.

Pepsi: Cola with nitrogen sounds like something a druggist in 1897 would have concocted as a digestive. And yet at the same time, it would come in handy if one’s rocket were to run out of fuel. Fine, keep it, but the mango’s gotta go. Nobody’s looking to Pepsi for a taste of the tropics.

And to come full circle, Pizza Hut: It’s clear that there’s no stopping you, and I admit that I’m curious about your next move. I imagine it will be some kind of football-adjacent atrocity you’ll Frankenstein together for the Super Bowl. Maybe the Stadium Supreme, a yard-long rectangular pizza topped with actual pig skin and field goal posts made of string cheese. Or perhaps The Baller, a football made of dough, baked to a rich brown, sporting cheese laces and packed with little pizza bites. It can double as a saucy piñata.

Whatever it is, it’ll be a doozy, because no one out-pizzas the Hut. Nor should they.